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Hemidrachm - 103rd Olympiad
| Issuer | Olympia |
|---|---|
| Year | 368 BC |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Hemidrachm (1/2) |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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|---|---|
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| Reverse description | An eagle with wings fully spread stands facing left, its head turned back to the right in a heraldic pose. The bird is rendered with careful attention to feather detail, with individual primary and secondary feathers delineated across the raised wings. The eagle, sacred to Zeus and emblematic of the sanctuary at Olympia, stands on a plain exergual ground line. The composition fills the irregular flan in a bold, confident manner characteristic of Elean engravers of the early 4th century BC. |
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| Edge | Plain |
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| Additional information |
Olympia did not function as a city-state and had no standing civic mint — the sanctuary at Elis struck coinage specifically to service the festival economy, covering the enormous influx of visitors, merchants, and competitors that descended on the site every four years. The 103rd Olympiad fell in 368 BC, a period of acute tension in the Peloponnese following Sparta's defeat at Leuctra and the sudden rise of Theban hegemony under Epaminondas. Whether the festival proceeded without political disruption that year is not clearly attested.
HGC 5, 436 treats this as a scarce type within an already thinly represented series.