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Research Coins: Electronic Auction

 

Hector Attempts to Burn the Greek Fleet

436, Lot: 328. Estimate $300.
Sold for $575. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

TROAS, Ilium. Julia Domna. Augusta, AD 193-217. Æ (28mm, 9.47 g, 6h). IOV ΔOMN CЄBACTH, draped bust right / [Є]K[T]Ω[P] IΛIЄNΩN, Hector charging right, holding shield and about to hurl torch. Bellinger T225. Near VF, rough green patina. Very rare.


Both Bellinger and BMC describe Hector as holding a shield and spear, but close examination reveals that the object in his right curves upward. This must represent a lit torch and thus depicts the events described in Homer’s Iliad (XVI.112-124):

And now, tell me, O Muses that hold your mansions on Olympus, how fire was thrown upon the ships of the Achaeans. Hector came close up and let drive with his great sword at the ashen spear of Ajax. He cut it clean in two just behind where the point was fastened on to the shaft of the spear. Ajax, therefore, had now nothing but a headless spear, while the bronze point flew far away and came ringing down on to the ground. Ajax knew the hand of heaven in this, and was dismayed at seeing that Jove had left him utterly defenseless and was willing victory for the Trojans. Therefore he drew back, and the Trojans flung fire upon the ship which was at once wrapped in flame.

This episode in the Iliad describes a shift in the tide of war, when Zeus (Jove) bestows favor on Troy’s prince and chief warrior, Hector, and rallies the Trojans. Hector has driven the Greeks back to their ships and is determined to burn them. Ajax, in one of the poem’s more memorable moments, seemingly single-handedly defends the ships against the Trojan forces with “a great sea-pike in his hands, twelve cubits long” (XV.823-824). But by the time Hector arrives, Ajax is exhausted and the Trojan hero effortlessly strips him of his weapon. The Trojans burn one ship, but the fleet is saved when Patroclus takes to the battlefield disguised in the armor of Achilles, the most feared Greek warrior.