‡ Sicily, Naxos, drachm, c. 450 BC, head of bearded Dionysos right, crowned with ivy, rev., Ν-Α-ΧΙ-ΟΝ, Silenos, nude, squatting half left, raising kantharos to his lips with right arm, 4.27g, die axis 9.00 (Cahn 56, 10 = K. Regling, Die griechischen Münzen der Sammlung Warren, Berlin, 1906, 274 = Boston 305, this piece; SNG ANS 518-519; SNG Lloyd 1152; SNG Newnham Davis 57; SNG Lewis 341; Jameson 676, all from the same dies), toned, good very fine Provenance: Edward Perry Warren; Boston Museum of Fine Arts (c. 1904); Dr. J. Hewitt Judd; Bank Leu 15, 4 May 1976, lot 88; Nelson Bunker Hunt collection, part IV, Sotheby’s, New York, 19 June 1991, lot 80; European Connoisseur collection (formed before 2002).Notes: Founded by settlers from Chalkis and the Cycladic island of Naxos, the colony, on the Western shore of Sicily was, according to Thucydides, the island’s first (734/3 B.C.). Its coinage began in the latter third of the sixth century and was, from the start, unusual. It was the first of the western settlements to employ a fully developed reverse type, which celebrated the viticulture that the populace had developed in the fertile volcanic soil of Mount Etna in whose shadow Naxos sat.

Estimate: GBP 6000-8000