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!
Tetradrachm
| Issuer | Syracuse |
|---|---|
| Year | 430 BC - 420 BC |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| 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 | Variable alignment ↺ |
| 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 | Log in to see details |
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | A finely modelled female head facing right, identified as the nymph Arethusa, her hair secured by four bands in the early Syracusan convention. She wears a necklace at her throat, and the portrait reflects the transitional style moving toward the later master-engraver period. Four dolphins swim around the central image in the field, their arrangement framing the head symmetrically. The ethnic legend ΣYPA-KO-Σ-ION is distributed among the dolphins in the field, identifying the issuing city of Syracuse. |
| 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 | ND (430 BC - 420 BC) |
| Additional information |
Syracuse's tetradrachms of this period were struck at the height of the city's rivalry with Carthage and Athens simultaneously — a geopolitical pressure that made maintaining a reliable, high-quality silver coinage a political act as much as an economic one. The coin falls within the generation immediately preceding the catastrophic Athenian expedition of 415–413 BC, which Syracuse famously repelled, capturing or destroying the largest naval force Athens had ever assembled.
The Boehringer 666 reference places this firmly within a die study that has allowed scholars to sequence Syracuse's fifth-century output with unusual precision.