Lot 1051
Illyro-Paeonian Region, Damastion. Silver Tetradrachm (13.35 g), ca. 360-345 BC. Kephi(sophon), magistrate. Laureate head of Apollo right. Reverse: [Δ]AMAΣ[T]-INΩN, tripod with lion's feet on inscribed base; in left field, magistrate's name: KHΦ[I]. May grp. VII, 62; McClean 5086. Rare. Well struck in high relief. Pleasing old cabinet tone. Choice Very Fine. Estimate Value $800 - 900
From the Lee Rousseau Collection; Ex Hirsch 221 (5 May 2002), 206; Peus 366 (25 October 2000), 117.
Although the precise location of Damastion remains a mystery today, at least its regional boundaries were known to the Greek geographer Strabo who mentions it in his famous Geography, written during the principate of Augustus. He says that there was an alliance of two Illyro-Paeonian tribes, the Dyestae and Enchelii, who had established themselves around the silver mines of Damastion (VII, 7. 326). It was these tribes, then, who were responsible for this coinage, and the only two magistrate's mentioned on the coins of Damastion before it was subsumed by the growing economic dominance of the Macedonian Kingdom of Philip II and Alexander III were Herakleidas and, as here, Kephisophon. They did so only at the very end of the period before the mint ceased to exist.
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| Realized $1,080 |
