Lot 4497

Description

Peloponessus, Mantinea, silver drachm (5.41 grams), c.370-360s. obv. Bearded warrior (Odysseos?), nude from the waist down, wearing traveling hat, cuirass and special shoes, dancing a `war' dance to right, holding upright spear in his right hand and another transversely over his left shoulder with his left. Rev. Jugate busts of the Dioscouri to left on top of a low altar ornamented with triglyphs and metopes. (S.2713, BMC 6. MG 238. SNG Cop 246. Trait‚ III 957, pl. CCVI, 34. Several minor scuffs and scratches, otherwise extremely rare.

Ex BCD Collection, LHS NUmismatics, Sale 96, May 8-9, 2006 (lot 1476 with ticket) and is said to have been found in northwest Greece. BCD and LHS noted, for an explanation of the meaning of this extraordinary type, to see L. Lacroix, Les Monnaies de Mantin‚e et les traditions arcadiennes, Bull. Ac. R. Belg. 1967, pp. 303-311. Traditionally the figure on the obverse has always been identified as Odysseus or a fisherman, but, as Lacroix shows, it is actually a warrior doing a kind of Pyrrhic dance for which the Mantineans were famous. This would have been a singularly appropriate type to celebrate the refoundation of the city. It was accompanied by Mantinea's first bronzes at the same time,