Sale: Triton VII, Lot: 99. Estimate $1000.  Closing Date: Monday, 12 January 2004.  Sold For $1500. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SICILY, Syracuse. Time of Timoleon. 344-317 BC. Æ Dilitron (21.30 gm). SURAKOS-IWN, bearded male head left, wearing Corinthian helmet / Pegasos flying left; dolphin and S below. Calciati II pg. 181, 77; SNG Morcom 712; SNG ANS 524; SNG Lloyd -; SNG Copenhagen 723; Favorito 22; Laffaille 222. VF, dark green and brown patina. Rare. ($1000)

Bronze in the form of this fine dilitron of 24 onkiai and concomitant fractions continued to dominate the economy of Syracuse after the end of the Second Democracy, the tyrannies of Dionysios I and II, and the emergence of the moderately oligarchic and Corinthian-modelled government of Timoleon (344-337 BC).

Some silver on the Corinthian weight standard, and gold on the local litra standard, tentatively re-emerged, but it was not until the tyranny and kingship of Agathokles (317-289 BC) that Syracuse recommenced issuing a large silver coinage on its traditional Attic standard together with an extensive bronze coinage whose metrology still baffles numismatists.