Greek Silver and Bronze Coins

Lot 3102    SESSION 11 (9.30am Thursday)    Greek Silver and Bronze Coins

Estimate $10,000
Bid at live.noble.com.au

THRACO-MACEDONIAN TRIBES, The Derrones. c.475-450 B.C., silver dodecadrachm (38.89 gm), Obv. male driver seated in ox cart moving to left, holding goad in raised right hand and reins in left, a crested Corinthian helmet in field above ox to left, plain under ox, ground line with dotted exergue line below, another line lower still, Rev. triskeles of human legs with central dot, uncertain between legs. Reverse weakly struck as typical for this series, (S.1315 [£6500], Sv.16 (p.9, Pl.II,4 [same dies], AMNG III/2 [p.56, 5] and pl. xxv, 18 [same dies]), Traite 1450 Pl.XLIV, 7 [same dies]. Svoronos report one example from these dies [same weight]). Very fine and very rare.

A similar example from the same dies in the CNG Triton VIII Auction Sale January 11, 2005, (lot 222, weighed 38.80 grams (same weight, realised $7250 + 15%US). The Derrones were a Thraco-Macedonian tribe that lived in the mountainous Pangei region (Pernar), on the river Strymon in Macedon. Types exist with the ox cart going to left and others to the right. Recent hoards and other earlier finds suggest less than 100 of these large silver coins survive today. The context and meaning of the types of the Derrones' dodekadrachms are still being debated. Little is known of this tribe other than what can be gleaned from their surviving coinage. Hoard find-spots suggest that they inhabited inland Paeonia, and the absence of their coins from the Asyut hoard suggests that the coinage postdates the burial of that hoard. The obverse type depicts a male figure who is most likely the tribal king and hereditary high priest while the helmet suggests a military reference.