Roma Numismatics Ltd
Auction XXIII 24-25 Mar 2022
View prices realized
► Sale information
Find similar lots
Ionia, Klazomenai AR Tetradrachm. Circa 160 BC. Laureate head of Zeus to right / Amazon standing slightly to left, holding long sceptre and bipennis, short sword at side; palm branch lying at feet, ΔIOΣ ΣΩTHPOΣ to right, EΠIΦANOYΣ to left, KΛAZO in exergue. Seyrig, Revue Numismatique, 1971, p. 24-25, fig. 1 (same obv. die); Price p. 246; Meadows Clazomenae - (A1/R- [unlisted reverse die]); Coin Hoards VIII, 471 (Tartous, Syria, 1987), pl. LXIV, 1 (same obv. die). 16.79g, 32mm, 12h.
Near Extremely Fine; a highly attractive portrait of Zeus. A unique variant of an exceedingly rare series; Meadows knew of only four civic tetradrachms from Klazomenai, a fifth example was sold in Roma Auction XIII, lot 232 and this example is the sixth but is unique with the horizontal palm branch.
Ex Leu Numismatik AG, Auction 7, 24 October 2020, lot 1259.
Until 1987 the coinage of Klazomenai was believed to have come to an end at the close of the 3rd century BC with a fairly unremarkable issue of Alexander-type tetradrachms. Although the present type featuring Zeus and an Amazon was known since at least the 1970s with the publication of a specimen by H. Seyrig, the ethnic was missing and it was not until the discovery and publication of another specimen by Kinns and Price that the type was attributable to Klazomenai. Since then a further two specimens were identified by Meadows, all of which (and also the present piece) are struck from the same obverse die.
Meadows further noted that the reverse portrayal of what is clearly an Amazon, heavily armed and with one breast exposed, despite initially appearing inexplicable, may be rationally explained by the fact that the city was located in the centre of an area that was widely believed to have once been the realm of the Amazons. Indeed, a great many of the neighbouring cities such as Kyme, Ephesos, Smyrna and Myrina among others, claimed to have been founded by eponymous Amazons. He proceeds to hypothesise that the type was the product of a territorial war between Klazomenai and neighbouring Temnos in circa 175-150 BC. He concludes: "in such circumstances, the choice of Zeus Soter Epiphanes as a coin type may well have had a polemical function within the land-claim being made by Clazomenae. So too, perhaps, did the reference to an Amazonian past".
However, Meadows does not account for the extreme rarity of the coinage. Indeed, he notes that if the Alexander-type coins of Temnos from this period and the Zeus-Amazon coinage of Klazomenai are connected, that this would explain why Temnos had issued such a seemingly large coinage at so late a date. Yet the question of why a Klazomenian war-coinage, which would have necessarily equalled that of their adversary, is so poorly represented today goes unanswered.
An alternative explanation for this issue may lie in the legend of the coin, which names Zeus as 'Manifest Saviour'. Evidently the issue is connected with an epiphane of the god to the Klazomenians which led to a military victory (the war with Temnos can hardly have warranted ascribing the epithet of Soteros to the god, since the war ended in an apparent stalemate that was resolved through mediation by the city of Knidos). This coin may possibly represent a celebratory issue struck in honour of a festival of which all record has now vanished. Certainly, Zeus does not appear before on the coinage of Klazomenai, and the issue bears many similarities to other festival coinages such as the Hyakinthotrophia coinage of Knidos c. 200 BC, the Athena Nikephoros issue of Pergamon c. 165 BC, and the festival of Apollo at Daphne issues under Antiochos IV at approximately the same time (166/165 BC). The victory which was ascribed to Zeus and which occasioned this coinage cannot be identified from the surviving information. It may have been connected to the victory achieved by Eumenes II over the Galatians in 166 who had been lately conducting damaging raids throughout the region.
Near Extremely Fine; a highly attractive portrait of Zeus. A unique variant of an exceedingly rare series; Meadows knew of only four civic tetradrachms from Klazomenai, a fifth example was sold in Roma Auction XIII, lot 232 and this example is the sixth but is unique with the horizontal palm branch.
Ex Leu Numismatik AG, Auction 7, 24 October 2020, lot 1259.
Until 1987 the coinage of Klazomenai was believed to have come to an end at the close of the 3rd century BC with a fairly unremarkable issue of Alexander-type tetradrachms. Although the present type featuring Zeus and an Amazon was known since at least the 1970s with the publication of a specimen by H. Seyrig, the ethnic was missing and it was not until the discovery and publication of another specimen by Kinns and Price that the type was attributable to Klazomenai. Since then a further two specimens were identified by Meadows, all of which (and also the present piece) are struck from the same obverse die.
Meadows further noted that the reverse portrayal of what is clearly an Amazon, heavily armed and with one breast exposed, despite initially appearing inexplicable, may be rationally explained by the fact that the city was located in the centre of an area that was widely believed to have once been the realm of the Amazons. Indeed, a great many of the neighbouring cities such as Kyme, Ephesos, Smyrna and Myrina among others, claimed to have been founded by eponymous Amazons. He proceeds to hypothesise that the type was the product of a territorial war between Klazomenai and neighbouring Temnos in circa 175-150 BC. He concludes: "in such circumstances, the choice of Zeus Soter Epiphanes as a coin type may well have had a polemical function within the land-claim being made by Clazomenae. So too, perhaps, did the reference to an Amazonian past".
However, Meadows does not account for the extreme rarity of the coinage. Indeed, he notes that if the Alexander-type coins of Temnos from this period and the Zeus-Amazon coinage of Klazomenai are connected, that this would explain why Temnos had issued such a seemingly large coinage at so late a date. Yet the question of why a Klazomenian war-coinage, which would have necessarily equalled that of their adversary, is so poorly represented today goes unanswered.
An alternative explanation for this issue may lie in the legend of the coin, which names Zeus as 'Manifest Saviour'. Evidently the issue is connected with an epiphane of the god to the Klazomenians which led to a military victory (the war with Temnos can hardly have warranted ascribing the epithet of Soteros to the god, since the war ended in an apparent stalemate that was resolved through mediation by the city of Knidos). This coin may possibly represent a celebratory issue struck in honour of a festival of which all record has now vanished. Certainly, Zeus does not appear before on the coinage of Klazomenai, and the issue bears many similarities to other festival coinages such as the Hyakinthotrophia coinage of Knidos c. 200 BC, the Athena Nikephoros issue of Pergamon c. 165 BC, and the festival of Apollo at Daphne issues under Antiochos IV at approximately the same time (166/165 BC). The victory which was ascribed to Zeus and which occasioned this coinage cannot be identified from the surviving information. It may have been connected to the victory achieved by Eumenes II over the Galatians in 166 who had been lately conducting damaging raids throughout the region.