Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
Drachm
| Issuer | Naxos (Sicily) |
|---|---|
| Year | 461 BC - 430 BC |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Drachm (5) |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | Log in to see details |
| Diameter | Log in to see details |
| Thickness | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Technique | Log in to see details |
| Orientation | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | Bearded head of Dionysos facing left, wreathed with ivy, his long hair falling in wavy locks behind the neck. The god's mature, dignified features are rendered with exceptional sculptural quality characteristic of the Early Classical style, with deeply engraved beard and sensitively modeled facial planes. The portrait is contained within a finely executed border of beads. |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Log in to see details |
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Bearded Silenos, nude, seated facing left in a relaxed squatting posture upon rocky ground, holding a kantharos (wine cup) aloft in his raised right hand. His body is rendered with vigorous naturalism, the musculature finely detailed in the Early Classical manner. The ethnic legend ΝΑΧΙΟΝ is arranged around the field in Greek characters, and the whole design is enclosed within a dotted border. |
| Reverse script | Log in to see details |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Edge | Log in to see details |
| Mint | Log in to see details |
| Mintage | Log in to see details |
| Additional information |
Naxos was the oldest Greek colony in Sicily, founded around 734 BC, and among the first cities destroyed by Dionysius I of Syracuse in 403 BC — its population enslaved, its site effectively erased. The coins struck in the decades before that destruction, including this issue, represent the city's final flourishing under restored democracy following the expulsion of Hieron's supporters around 461 BC.
The style of this series is closely associated with the engraver responsible for some of the most naturalistic die work in fifth-century Sicilian coinage. Cahn's die study remains the definitive reference for attribution within the type.