SICILY. Segesta. Circa 475/70-455/50 BC. Didrachm or Nomos (Silver, 21 mm, 8.79 g, 8 h). The river-god Krimisos, in the form of a hunting dog, standing right, on the scent. Rev. ΣEΓEΣTA 𐤆IB Diademed head of the nymph Aigeste to right, her hair in a krobylos that is bound up and falls over her diadem. Gulbenkian 238 (same dies). Hurter 12b (this coin, V3/R9). Jameson 696 (same dies). SNG München 839 (same dies). Rare. A beautifully toned example of wonderful late Archaic style, with an old and impressive pedigree. Thin flan crack and the reverse struck slightly off center, otherwise, good very fine.




The types of the long-running series of didrachms from Segesta relate to its foundation myth, in which Aigeste, the daughter of the Trojan Hippotes, was seduced by the river-god Krimisos, who appeared to her in the form of a hunting dog. Aigestes, the offspring of this relationship, became the ancestor of the Elymians, a native people living in western Sicily in and around the cities of Entella, Eryx and Segesta. In the Aeneid, Vergil later took up a local myth according to which Hippotes came to Sicily in the wake of Aeneas' wanderings. The appearance of such mythological connections of local heroes to the progenitor of the Romans was not uncommon in the time of the Roman expansion: it was a way of dealing with changing political dynamics and it often brought along, as in the case of the Elymians, favorable treatment by the Roman administration. However, there may be some truth to the myth, as the few recorded Elymian words do in fact point toward an Italian origin of this people.