MYSIA. Kyzikos. Circa 450-330 BC. Stater (Electrum, 20 mm, 16.07 g, 12 h). Herakles kneeling right and strangeling the Nemean lion, which crouches left, clawing at his leg; below, tunny to right. Rev. Quadripartite incuse square. BMC 72. Boston MFA 1493-4 = Warren 1484-5. Gulbenkian 628. Jameson 2197. SNG Paris 308. Von Fritze I, 161 and pl. V, 9. A wonderful piece, beautifully centered on a full flan, with a magnificent rendering of Herakles’ first labor, and surely among the finest known examples. A few faint marks, otherwise, extremely fine.


The obverse shows Herakles grappling with the Nemean lion, the hero kneeling as he strangles the invulnerable beast with his bare hands. The compact composition has close numismatic parallels elsewhere in the Greek world, notably on early diobols of Herakleia in Lucania and, somewhat later, on the celebrated gold issues of Syracuse under Dionysios I. Either tradition may have informed the Kyzikene engraver, though the precise direction of influence remains uncertain. As so often in the electrum coinage of Kyzikos, a widely recognizable image was adapted to the city’s own monetary language by the addition of the tunny beneath the scene. The type thus belongs to the broader Kyzikene practice of appropriating and reworking prestigious motifs circulating across the Greek world.