Rhegium
Tetradrachm circa 415-400, AR 17.38 g. Lions mask facing. Rev. PHΓINON Laureate head of Apollo r.; behind, two olive leaves. Herzfelder 72bis. Dewing 535. Historia Numorum Italy 2496. Very rare and in exceptional condition for the issue. A portrait of superb style struck in high relief and a lovely light iridescent tone. An almost invisible metal flaw on neck and an unobtrusive die-break, otherwise good extremely fine From a Swiss collection and privately purchased from Numismatica Genevensis in May 2008. For more than a century the facing lion's scalp was a familiar sight to Greek merchants in Italy and Sicily as the badge of large-denomination silver coins of Rhegium. Initially Rhegium's trade coins were in the form of staters struck to the Euboic-Chalcidian standard, and later they became tetradrachms of the Euboic-Attic standard (such as the present coin). In both cases the choice of denomination and weight were dictated by what was commercially useful in Sicily. The portrait of a youthful, effeminate Apollo on the reverse would have been equally as familiar as the lion's scalp; indeed, they would have been considered inseparable since they had been paired for about two generations by the time this coin was struck. Its elegant appeal had supplanted the earlier reverse type of the seated figure of Iocastes, the traditional founder of the city. The major exception to the lion's scalp being the principal design on Rhegium's trade coins occurs on tetradrachms struck circa 480-462 B.C., when the tyrant Anaxilas initiated a complete overhaul of the coinage, which involved a change in design. He chose the types of a mule cart and a bounding hare, which did not long persist at Rhegium, but which became the standard design at the Sicilian city of Zancle, directly across the straits, which Anaxilas occupied and renamed Messana.