THRACE. Ainos. Circa 400-370 BC. Tetradrachm (Silver, 27 mm, 15.66 g, 1 h). Head of Hermes facing, wearing petasos and turned slightly to the left. Rev. AINION Goat standing right; at his feet, lighted torch; all within a shallow incuse square. BMFA 787 = Warren 474 = Traité II, 4, pl. CCCXLVI, 2 ( same dies ). May, Ainos, 342(A206.1/P229). Rare. A splendid example with an emotionally powerful facing head of Hermes. Some minor surface roughness, otherwise, extremely fine.

From a European collection, ex Gorny & Mosch 207, 15 October 2012, 107.

This coin bears one of the finest of all the heads of Hermes to appear on the coinage of Ainos. In many ways, even wearing his petasus, he would have fit in perfectly with the Florentine aristocrats one sees in the Renaissance paintings of the 15th century: for example, Gozzoli's fresco of 1459-1460, the Procession of the Magi in the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi. There is a haughtiness here, but a deserved one.