Nomos 38

MYSIA. Kyzikos. Circa 450-330 BC. Hekte (Electrum, 11 mm, 2.66 g). The infant Herakles on the left, wrestling with Hera's serpents; on the right, his younger brother Iphikles moving to right and stretching out his left arm and leaning on his right hand; below, tunny fish swimming to left. Rev. Quadripartite incuse square. Cf. BMFA 1531 (stater). Cf. SNG Paris 341 (stater). Von Fritze I 208. Attractive, sharp and well-centered. Minor traces of die rust, otherwise, about extremely fine.

Herakles resulted from one of Zeus's infidelities against Hera. She found that extremely annoying and, being a goddess, she sent serpents to kill both the infant Herakles and his mortal twin brother Iphikles (the conception process was a complicated one). At the time, they were apparently about 8 months old and were both sleeping when the snakes arrived; but their loud slithering woke Iphikles who immediately cried out (normally snakes silently slither but these may have been drunk). Herakles, always an act-first-ask-questions-later kind of a guy (even as a child), promptly strangled them and when his nurse came in, she found him playing with their bodies! This story must have been a favorite of the magistrate who picked it as the device for the coins struck under his supervision.