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Stater
| Issuer | Phaistos (Crete (ancient)) |
|---|---|
| Year | 400 BC - 360 BC |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Diameter | 25 mm |
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| Obverse description | Herakles depicted nude and facing, head turned to the right, standing in a frontal pose with his weight evenly distributed. He holds a club in one hand and a bow in the other, with a lionskin suspended from the left field — the canonical attributes of the hero rendered in archaic Cretan style. Four pellets are disposed around the figure, serving as decorative field elements characteristic of this Phaistian series. The engraving is bold and stylised, reflecting the hand of a skilled die-cutter working within the early Classical Aeginetic weight standard. |
|---|---|
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| Mintage | ND (400 BC - 360 BC) |
| Additional information |
Phaistos, the Minoan palace city in the Mesara plain, had long faded as a political power by the time this stater was struck, but the polis maintained its mint into the classical period with stubborn independence. The city's coinage is rare by any measure — Phaistos was never a major trading hub in the fourth century, and surviving examples from this series are thinly distributed across collections worldwide.
The Svoronos references narrow this to a small die group, and the de Luynes provenance traces a significant example to one of the nineteenth century's most rigorous private collections.