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!
Hemidrachm
| Issuer | Naxos (Sicily) |
|---|---|
| Year | 420 BC - 403 BC |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Litra |
| 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 | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Greek |
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | A bearded Silen depicted in three-quarter frontal view, kneeling on his right knee with his torso turned slightly to the left and his head turned to the right, rendered with vigorous sculptural energy. In his raised left hand he holds a kantharos, while his right hand grasps a thyrsos, its shaft resting near his right knee. The figure's robust, animalistic nature is conveyed through the muscular body and characteristically satyr-like facial features. The ethnic legend ΝΑΞΙ ΟΝ is disposed in the field around the figure, identifying the issuing city of Naxos in Sicily. |
| 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 by Chalcidian settlers around 734 BC, and its coins are among the most artistically ambitious of the western Greek world. The city was destroyed by Dionysius I of Syracuse in 403 BC — the terminal date of this issue — its population enslaved or dispersed, and the site never reoccupied as a functioning polis. These hemidrachms were struck in the colony's final decades, during escalating Syracusan pressure that ultimately ended Naxian coinage permanently.