Syracuse.   Quarter stater or 30 litrae circa 344-339/8, AV 2.15 g. [ZEY]Σ EΛEY – [ΘEPIOΣ] Laureate head of Zeus Eleutherios l. Rev. ΣYP – A – KO – ΣIΩN Pegasus flying l.; to l. AP ligate and below, three pellets. Rizzo pl. LVIII, 1 (these dies). Jameson 851 (these dies). SNG Lloyd 1440 (these dies). Boston, MFA 451. SNG ANS 493 (these dies). SNG Copenhagen 710 (these dies).
Rare. A superb portrait of fine style struck on a full flan. Extremely fine

Ex NAC 9, 1996, 233; Triton VII, 2004, 96; Stack & Kroisos 14 January 2008, 2123 and Triton XIII, 2010, 66 sales. From the Athos and Dina Moretti, Ferrendelli and Lawrence R. Stack collections.
This rare gold issue was struck in support of the conflicts undertaken by the Corinthian general Timoleon and his army of Peloponnesian mercenaries on behalf of the Syracusans, who had fallen on dark days. In an attempt to expel their tyrant, Dionysius II, in 345 BC, the Syracusans had initially enlisted the aid of Hicetas, the tyrant of Leontini, but his real intention was to take control of Syracuse and become the preeminent power in Greek Sicily. At the same time fear was growing that the Carthaginians would take advantage of the chaos in Syracuse to launch a new offensive and perhaps overwhelm the Greek cities of the island. Faced with all of these problems, the Syracusans begged for aid from Corinth, the mother city of Syracuse. In response, Corinth dispatched Timoleon and a large mercenary force to set things straight. In 344 BC, Timoleon defeated Hicetas at the Battle of Adranon and in the following year he negotiated the surrender of Dionysius II in return for safe passage to Corinth. With the immediate danger to Syracuse now out of the way, Timoleon restored the city’s democracy (its third in a series punctuated by tyrannies) and increased the population. However, there still remained the distant clouds of Carthaginian menace while Timoleon was undoing the damage of war and tyranny in Syracuse. In 339/8 BC, the Punic storm broke on Sicily and a Punic army of some 70,000 men was poised to overrun the Greek cities. Timoleon met this army with his much smaller force of mercenaries at the Krimissos River and defeated it. This severe loss forced the Carthaginians to renegotiate the boundaries of Punic and Greek territory on Sicily and subsequently recognized the old division at the Halycus River. Shortly after saving both Syracuse and Greek Sicily, the much-loved Timoleon was forced to retire from his leadership position in 337 BC due to blindness, and he died shortly thereafter. The types of this coin reflect both the influence of Timoleon and of his Peloponnesian mercenaries. The obverse depicts the head of Zeus Eleutherios (”Zeus of Freedom”), a god who was invoked for obvious reasons in the context of Timoleon’s work to rid the Syracusans of their tyrants. The same head of the god also appears with a full Greek label on bronze coins struck at Syracuse under Timoleon. The Pegasus of the reverse type is derived from the coins of Corinth, which regularly employed it as the badge of the city.