Roma Numismatics Ltd
E-Sale 47 28 Jun 2018
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Antoninus Pius Æ19 of Nicopolis ad Istrum, Moesia Inferior. AD 138-161. AV T AI AΔPIA ANTΩNEINOC, bare head right / NEIKOΠOΛEITΩN, Apollo standing right, resting hand on tree trunk upon which a lizard is climbing and holding arrow(?). RPC IV Online 4328 var. (rev. legend, temporary); Varbanov 2116; Naumann 60, 268; CNG 69, 919; Peus 378, 989. 4.51g, 19mm, 7h.
Good Very Fine. Of fine style and well-centred. Very Rare.
The subject of this reverse type recalls a bronze Greek sculpture of Apollo reported by Pliny: "Praxiteles also made a youthful Apollo called in Greek the Lizard-Slayer because he is waiting with an arrow for a lizard creeping toward him" (Natural History, 34.69-70). A bronze sculpture in the Cleveland Museum is thought to be a Greek original by, or close to, Praxiteles or a later Roman archaizing copy. Pliny's suggestion that the sculpture is a depiction of Apollo as Sauroktonos or Lizard-Slayer is difficult to interpret in the absence of a mythological precedent.
Michael Bennet has suggested that the lizard represents a reduced-scale python and thus, recalls Apollo slaying the Python at Delphi (Praxiteles: The Cleveland Apollo (London: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2013, 82-83). The playful re-imagining of the giant Python as a small lizard clinging to a tree suggests Apollo's mastery over it and anticipates its eventual defeat, thus alluding to an important mythological event, the founding of the Delphic oracle.
The numerous surviving marble copies of the sculpture (see the Vatican and Louvre examples) suggest that the Praxiteles' work was well known in antiquity, as do the coins struck at Nicopolis ad Istrum in the second century. This reverse type struck for Antoninus Pius is the earliest recorded representation of the famous sculpture on a coin, a type that would be used until the reign of Macrinus (see Varbanov 3372).
Good Very Fine. Of fine style and well-centred. Very Rare.
The subject of this reverse type recalls a bronze Greek sculpture of Apollo reported by Pliny: "Praxiteles also made a youthful Apollo called in Greek the Lizard-Slayer because he is waiting with an arrow for a lizard creeping toward him" (Natural History, 34.69-70). A bronze sculpture in the Cleveland Museum is thought to be a Greek original by, or close to, Praxiteles or a later Roman archaizing copy. Pliny's suggestion that the sculpture is a depiction of Apollo as Sauroktonos or Lizard-Slayer is difficult to interpret in the absence of a mythological precedent.
Michael Bennet has suggested that the lizard represents a reduced-scale python and thus, recalls Apollo slaying the Python at Delphi (Praxiteles: The Cleveland Apollo (London: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2013, 82-83). The playful re-imagining of the giant Python as a small lizard clinging to a tree suggests Apollo's mastery over it and anticipates its eventual defeat, thus alluding to an important mythological event, the founding of the Delphic oracle.
The numerous surviving marble copies of the sculpture (see the Vatican and Louvre examples) suggest that the Praxiteles' work was well known in antiquity, as do the coins struck at Nicopolis ad Istrum in the second century. This reverse type struck for Antoninus Pius is the earliest recorded representation of the famous sculpture on a coin, a type that would be used until the reign of Macrinus (see Varbanov 3372).