Watch List notes:

GREEK COINS
Sybrita

Stater 4th century BC, AR 12.09 g. Bearded head of Dionysus r., wearing wreath of vine leaves; in r. field, bunch of grapes. Rev. ΣΥΒΡ − ΙΤΙΩΝ ?? Head of Hermes r., wearing petasus and chlamys; in r. field, caduceus. Traité III, 1712 (this reverse dies). Svoronos 4 and pl. XXX, 15-16. Schefold 522 (this coin). Jameson 2136 (this coin).
Extremely rare and among the finest specimens known of this intriguing issue. Two
wonderful portraits of superb late Classical-early Hellenistic style and with
a magnificent old cabinet tone, good very fine / about extremely fine


Ex Leu 77, 2000, 233 and NGSA 7, 2012, 69 sales. From the Jameson and Käppeli collections.
Unlike their brethren in other areas of the Hellenic world, the remote Cretans maintained archaic forms of speech and insular traditions; thus it is not surprising that the adoption of coinage in Crete occurred rather later than elsewhere. The earliest coins that circulated on the island, imported Aeginetan staters of the type of a sea turtle with a T-shaped pattern of dots on the carapace and a developed skew reverse, arrived due to the close ties between Aegina in the Saronic Gulf and the city of Kydonia on the northwestern Cretan littoral, which it had colonized c. 520 B.C. The abundance of Aegina's output was severely curtailed around 480 B.C., and after its capture in 457 B.C. it may have ended entirely for some time. Having by this time become heavily dependent on imported coins of Aegina for its economy, the sudden lack of such specie drove the Cretans to develop their own native coinages, first at Gortyna and Phaistos in alliance, then slightly later at both Knossos and Lyttos concurrently. The earliest coins from these four cities were nearly always overstruck on earlier Aeginetan issues.
Beginning in the second quarter of the 4th century B.C., coinage spread to other metropolitan centers on the island, notably Sybrita, Axos and Itanos. Sybrita, which lay inland in west-central Crete atop Kefala Hill along the southern slopes of Mount Ida, controlled the Amari Basin through which the principal north-south and east-west trade routes passed. This fortuitous siting, along with its sea-port on the Libyan Sea at Soulia, which was a part of the territory of Sybrita, allowed the city to prosper commercially and culturally during the later Hellenic and early Hellenistic periods.
The early coinage of Sybrita was struck only infrequently, and the scarcity of the coins today suggests that these periods of striking were relatively short-lived. Nonetheless, it is interesting both for its variety and high artistic quality. Its first coins were struck c. 380 B.C., and show a seated Hermes on the obverse and a winged hippocamp surrounded by the city's ethnic in a disorganized fashion within a shallow incuse square on the reverse. Around 360 B.C. Sybrita replaced Phaistos as the junior partner in its alliance with Gortyna, and for a few years struck types copying the coinage of its sister city: on the obverse, a female - presumably but not conclusively identified as Europa - seated amid the branches of a tree, with a pose of patient expectation resting her head upon her hand, and on the reverse a bull standing with its head turned back to lick its flank. Like the contemporary coins of Gortyna, this type is commonly found overstruck on Aeginetan staters or earlier native Cretan issues. After a hiatus of several years, in the final decades of the 4th century B.C. Sybrita struck an especially beautiful coinage, the present specimen being a particularly splendid example. The superbly rendered types portray the city's principal deities, the head of Dionysos, the lord of the vine, with his wreath of ivy before which is a cluster of grapes on a small twig occupying the obverse, and the head of the messenger-god Hermes, wearing a petasos and accompanied by his sign of office, the caduceus, on the reverse. These lovely types were probably inspired by coins from the northern Aegean regions of Macedon and Thrace, as an influx of coinage from that area was then making its way to the island in the purses of Cretan mercenaries who had served in the Macedonian wars of Philip II and Alexander III.