Praxiteles’ Apollo Sauroktonos - Unpublished Type for Marcus

227, Lot: 240. Estimate $100. Sold for $210. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

MOESIA INFERIOR, Nicopolis ad Istrum. Marcus Aurelius. As Caesar, AD 139-161. Æ 20mm (5.20 g, 6h). Bare-headed and draped bust right / Apollo Sauroktonos standing right, resting hand on tree stump on which a lizard is ascending. AMNG I -; Varbanov -; Moushmov -. VF, dark green patina, light roughness. Unpublished in the standard references.

Pliny (NH 34.69) describes the famous bronze sculpture by Praxiteles that the reverse of this coin depicts: “Although Praxiteles was more successful, and therefore more famous for his marble sculptures, he nevertheless also created very beautiful works in bronze…. He made a youthful Apollo called the Sauroktonos (‘Lizard-Slayer’), waiting in ambush for a creeping lizard, close at hand, with an arrow.”