Bruttium, Kaulonia AR Stater. Circa 525-500 BC. Nude Apollo advancing to right, holding laurel branch in upright right hand, small daimon running to right on extended left arm, holding branches; to right, stag standing to right, head reverted; KAVΛ to left; all within dot and cable border / Incuse of obverse, but no ethnic and daimon in raised outline. Noe, Caulonia, Group A, 10; SNG ANS 146; Jameson 408; Boston MFA 172 = Warren 138; HN Italy 2035 (all from same dies); HGC 1, 1416. 7.72g, 31mm, 12h.

Extremely Fine; attractive old cabinet tone.

Ex George & Julia Fekula Collection, Classical Numismatic Group, Auction 87, 18 May 2011, lot 189;
Ex Nelson Bunker Hunt Collection, Sotheby’s, 19 June 1991, lot 45.

The design of the incuse staters of Kaulonia has elicited various interpretations over the years; those that were current at the time of writing Historia Numorum in 1911 were reviewed by Barclay Head. Head interpreted the figure as being a representation of the oikist Typhon, who holds in his hand a plant (καυλος) stalk, alike to that of the parsnip plant, which he takes to be a punning allusion to the city. Modern scholarship however tends to identify the figure as Apollo, as the symbolism is more easily associated with this deity – a laurel branch, for instance, being more easily recognisable and sacred to Apollo. The small running figure most likely represents a daimon, a divinity of a lower order, who serves as a messenger of the gods. It may be, given his occasionally winged feet, that this daimon should be seen to be a wind god such as Zephyros. The stag is the only element which has consistently defied explanation (even by Head); its meaning was clearly sufficiently explicit and important for it to have eventually served as a the principle reverse type of Kaulonia. It may be a reference to Artemis, who at Aegium was worshipped jointly with Apollo in a temple the two gods shared.