Silver Tetradrachm of Syracuse, 17.42 g.

Silver Tetradrachm of Syracuse, 17.42 g.

Syracuse, Sicily, Italy

c. 450-430 BCE

Obverse: Charioteer driving slow biga to right; Nike flying above, crowning horses

Reverse: Head of Arethusa to right, surrounded by four dolphins; ΣΥΡΑΚ[Ο]ΣΙΟ[Ν]

Style/Period: High Classical Greece

This coin depicts the traditional victorious chariot and the Syracusan nymph Arethusa (see coin 91.029), now rendered in the High Classical style. This style, dominant from 450 to 400 BCE, reflects an even more naturalistic and less linear approach to the surface of the figures than the Severe Style (compare coin 91.030). Modeling creates areas of light and shade in the musculature of the horse, and the forms of the charioteer’s body are revealed through his clinging drapery.
Arethusa’s unusual hairstyle, wrapped four times with a thin cord, is another of the numerous stylistic changes that she will undergo down into the fourth century. The dolphins encircling her head are not so rigidly constrained by the original geometric form which established their arrangement in the Archaic coin (see 91.030).
---Kelly Swett Riordan, LU '93

Bibliography: E. Boehringer, Die Münzen von Syrakus (Berlin, Leipzig 1929) 672; A Catalogue of the Greek Coins in the British Museum: Sicily (Bologna 1963) 161, no. 119.

Former collection of Ottilia Buerger. Bought from Seaby's, October 12, 1972.

91.031

Wriston Art Center Galleries, Lawrence University, Appleton, WI,wriston-gallery@lawrence.edu,920-832-6890