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Æ18
| Issuer | Phytia |
|---|---|
| Year | 300 BC - 250 BC |
| Type | Standard circulation coin |
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| Obverse description | Laureate head of Apollo facing right, rendered in the Classical Greek style with fine wavy locks of hair swept back from the forehead and falling in undulating strands behind the neck. The youthful, idealized effigy displays a well-modelled profile with a straight nose and slightly parted lips. The laurel wreath encircles the head, consistent with Apollo's divine attributes as patron of Delphi. The field is plain, with no additional devices or legends. |
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| Reverse description | A Delphic tripod cauldron depicted facing, its three legs joined by outer rings from which hang decorative sacrificial fillets. The tripod, a quintessential symbol of Apollo's oracle at Delphi, is rendered with characteristic simplicity and bold relief typical of Akarnaniam civic bronze coinage of this period. The ethnic inscription ΦY ΘΕ, identifying the issuing community of Phytia, is distributed in the fields to either side of the tripod. |
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| Additional information |
Phytia was a minor Akarnanian settlement whose civic coinage is known from only a handful of types, all bronze. The Akarnanians operated as a federal league through much of this period, and small poleis like Phytia struck local issues intermittently rather than continuously — which accounts for the extreme rarity of surviving specimens. BCD Akarnania 354 represents one of the benchmark references for this type, drawn from the landmark Lanz sale of the BCD collection in 2007, still the definitive auction corpus for the region.