311, Lot: 154. Estimate $100. Sold for $65. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

THESSALY, Larissa. Circa 356-342 BC. AR Hemidrachm (15mm, 1.98 g, 11h). Head of the nymph Larissa facing slightly left, wearing ampyx and necklace / ΛAPIΣ–AIΩN, horse right, about to roll. BCD Thessaly II 331. VF, toned with some iridescence on the obverse, porous surfaces.

From the BCD Collection.

A note from BCD from the Triton sale: Around the last quarter of the 4th century, the Larissa hemidrachms started demonstrating a less careful engraving technique while at the same time they underwent a significant reduction in weight. This is the reason that many scholars, past and present, called them - and still do - diobols. If we take into account the fairly abrupt - within a generation - deterioration of the Thessalian economy and the inevitable societal changes that took place at the same time, we can hypothesize the following: the minting of Larissa drachms ended, rather abruptly, around the 320’s BC (or perhaps a little earlier) and its place was taken by these reduced weight hemidrachms together with the also reduced ‘light’ trihemiobols and obols; the three denominations being quite adequate for the needs of the shrinking internal economy. These continued to be produced, in decreasing quantities and quite spasmodically, into the 3rd century, to die out circa 280 BC (the trihemiobols and, especially, obols, somewhat earlier). The city’s bronze issues took up the slack and continued to be struck but less and less often and in smaller quantities. It would not be unreasonable, at least for this writer, to suggest that this situation dragged on until the Roman times. Also, the Confederacy or League coinage, in its various forms and denominations, would soon start being issued in Larissa, rendering the city coinage less necessary as time went on.