SICILY. Akragas. Circa 410-406 BC. Tetradrachm (Silver, 30 mm, 16.87 g). Charioteer driving quadriga galloping to right, holding the reins with both hands; above, Nike flying left, crowning the charioteer with a wreath; in exergue, crab downwards. Rev. AKP-A-Γ-ANTI-ΝΩ-N Two eagles standing right on a dead hare which lies upon a rock, the closer eagle has his wings closed and raises his head, the one in the back has his wings open and bends his head to the hare. Boston MFA 232 (same dies). De Luynes 859 (same dies). Dewing 561 (same dies). Jameson 1889 = Seltman, Engravers 6e (this coin, dies E/ζ). Rizzo pl. II, 1 (same dies). SNG ANS App. 2, 1296 (same dies). SNG Lloyd 818 (same dies). Westermark Period III, Series 1, 588.12 (this coin, O5/R6). Rare. Beautifully toned and of splendid, full Classical style, a wonderful coin from Akragas’ celebrated quadriga series, with an excellent pedigree. Very light doubling on the reverse, otherwise, good very fine.



This wonderful tetradrachm belongs to the final and most artistically ambitious phase of the Classical coinage of Akragas, produced only a few years before the city’s catastrophe in 406 BC. In Ulla Westermark’s definitive die study it forms part of Period III, the Quadriga/Eagle Pair series; remarkably, this entire tetradrachm group was produced from only seven obverse and sixteen reverse dies, and the present coin is Westermark 588.12, struck from dies O5/R6. The limited number of dies is worth emphasizing: the extraordinary artistic refinement of these issues should not be confused with a vast output of silver, for Westermark found the late silver coinage surprisingly scarce in relation to the size and importance of Akragas.

The new quadriga type reflects the powerful influence of contemporary Syracusan coinage, yet it was combined with imagery that was unmistakably Akragantine. The eagle had served as one of the city’s principal badges since the beginning of its coinage, while the crab, here placed unobtrusively in the exergue beneath the racing team, preserves its other great civic emblem. On the reverse, however, the traditional eagle has been transformed from a static heraldic bird into an astonishing study of predatory behavior: one eagle throws back its head while the second spreads its wings and bends toward the dead hare, creating both depth and a sequence of action within an exceptionally shallow field. The image is naturalistic in execution, but not merely zoological in meaning, for the eagle remained above all the bird of Zeus and a potent image of divine power.

The pair of eagles has long, and plausibly, been associated with the famous portent at the opening of Aischylos’ Agamemnon. There two eagles devour a pregnant hare, and the seer Kalchas recognizes in the birds Agamemnon and Menelaos and in their prey an omen of the coming destruction of Troy; significantly, the portent is not wholly auspicious, since the killing of the hare also arouses the anger of Artemis. The parallel with the Akragantine image is striking, and Aischylos’ famous omen may well have provided the inspiration for the type.

The historical setting lends the type an additional intensity. Carthage returned to large-scale intervention in Sicily in 409 BC, destroying Selinous and Himera, and in 406 turned against Akragas itself; after a prolonged siege the inhabitants abandoned the city, which was then occupied and plundered. Diodoros’ account makes the contrast especially striking, dwelling on the extraordinary wealth and splendor of Akragas immediately before describing its fall.

Older scholarship often connected the quadriga directly with the Olympic victory of the Akragantine Exainetos in 412 BC and the spectacular procession said to have accompanied his return home. Modern discussion is more cautious: Exainetos was victorious in the stadion, not the chariot race, and Westermark rejected the notion that these exceptional issues were created simply to commemorate a private athletic victory. The dies of the present coin are unsigned, and it would be hazardous to attach them to a named engraver; nevertheless, they belong to the same extraordinary workshop environment in which signed dies and engravers’ names appear on other late issues. This coin is therefore more than one of the acknowledged masterpieces of Sicilian die engraving: it is a product of the last brilliant years of Akragas before its Classical civic and artistic tradition was violently interrupted in 406 BC. Its provenance from the Jameson collection, together with its citation as this very specimen by both Seltman and Westermark, gives it an important place not only in the history of Akragas but also in the modern historiography of Greek numismatic art.