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762439. Sold For $7500

SICILY, Zankle-Messana. Circa 500-493 BC. AR Drachm (22mm, 5.76 g). DANKLE, dolphin swimming left within sickle-shaped harbor / Nine-part incuse square with scallop shell in center. Gielow Group 4 (unlisted dies); Asyut 10; SNG ANS 298-303. Near EF, toned, struck with slightly worn dies. Excellent metal. Rare in this condition.

Ex Hess-Leu (14 April 1954), lot 54; Roberto Allatani Collection (Ars Classica XIII, 27 June 1928), lot 229; Sir C. Giesler Thomas-Stanford Collection (Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge, 18 December 1918), lot 231.

The colony of Zankle was founded by Cumaean and Euboean settlers in the eighth century BC on the straits of Messina. Its name, meaning "sickle", was taken from it important sickle-shaped harbor. The colony prospered and even founded its own colonies at Mylae and Himera. Zankle was soon overshadowed by Rhegion, though, whose tyrant, Anaxilas, seized the colony around 488 BC and renamed the city Messana, after Peloponnesian Messenia, whose colonists he settled in Zankle.