Owner Comments:
SICILY. SYRACUSE. AGATHOCLES, ca. 317-289 BC. Gold 25 Litrai, 1.44 g., 9 mm., struck ca. 295-289 BC.
Ex Peus 376 (2003), 200 = Peus 372 (2002), 115 = Ars Classica XVII, (10/3/1934), 272.
Ex Naville & Cie XII (10/18/1926), 985, Hotel Schweizerhof in Lucerne, Switzerland; Collection of Juliusz Wertheim.
https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/kundig_naville1926_10_18/0005/image
Juliusz Wertheim was a Polish pianist, composer, and conductor who had a substantial influence on Arthur Rubenstein and who died two years later of a heart attack while conducting Wagner's Meistersinger Prelude with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra in a broadcast concert, on 6 May 1928. This auction also included coins from the famous archaeologist Arthur Evans who is most famous for unearthing the palace of Knossos on the Greek island of Crete.
Obv. Wreathed head of Persephone left.
Rev. ΣYPAKOΣIΩN, bull left.
Bérend, l’or, pl. 9, 14; SNG ANS 707; SNG Lloyd 1475; Dewing 936
Agathocles, in the words of Polybius, "starting from a plebeian and humble position—having been, as Timaeus sneeringly remarks, a potter—came from the wheel, clay, and smoke, quite a young man to Syracuse." And became tyrant of Syracuse, a city that "had obtained at that time the greatest reputation and the greatest wealth of any in the world; and afterwards" was regarded as suzerain of all Sicily, and lord of certain districts in Italy. Agathocles "not only made an attempt upon Africa, but eventually died in possession of the greatness he had acquired. It is on this account that the story is told of Publius Scipio, the first conqueror of the Carthaginians, that being asked whom he considered to have been the most skilful administrators and most distinguished for boldness combined with prudence, he replied, 'the Sicilians Agathocles and Dionysius.'"
The head of Persephone with grain ears in her hair strongly resembles the head of Tanit, or at least her hairdo, featured on the gold (then later electrum) staters of Carthage preceding this coin and also contemporary with it. This may have to do with the close relationship, sometimes hostile, between Carthage and the various cities of Sicily, including Syracuse.
Scipio perhaps was influenced by Agathocles' own response to an invasion of his land by Carthaginian forces, which was to head down to Africa to bring the war to Carthage's hometown. Scipio would do the same almost 100 years later to force a favorable conclusion to the Second Punic War.