Péloponèse - Sikyonie, Sikyon - Statère (c. 335-330). Rare... Lot 40

Péloponèse - Sikyonie, Sikyon - Statère (c. 335-330). Rare et magnifique exemplaire. 12.24g. - BCD 219 - BMC 56 Superbe à FDC - CHOICE AU This type depicts a chimera, a creature which “ was of divine stock, not of men, in the fore part a lion, in the hinder a serpent, and in the midst a goat, breathing forth in terrible wise the might of blazing fire” (Homer, Iliad 6.179-182), the child of Typhon and Echidna, and therefore a sibling of Cerberus and the Lernaean Hydra: such a monster is well fitted for an emission linked to war. Indeed, this stater is one of the last ones struck at Sicyon in Peloponnese, a series displaying a wreath on the obverse with the letters A, I or N on the reverse (A being the rarest), supposedly after Alexander issued his plea for mercenaries in 334 BC, in order to be given as initial payment or signing-bonus. These coins are often found in very good condition, which suggests that those mercenaries buried them before leaving for a war from which they did not return alive. It is supposed that they were issued thanks to the melting or restrike of earlier issues, Sicyon having been the second most productive mint after Athens during the Peloponnesian War of the fifth century BC.