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Important copyright information:
The data below is presented by permission of the copyright holder(s). Reproduction is allowed only by authorization from Naville Numismatics Ltd..
| Naville Numismatics Ltd. > Auction 27 | Auction date: 27 November 2016 |
| Lot number: 299 | |
| Lot description: Egypt, Alexandria Antoninus Pius, 138-161 Drachm circa 140-141 (year 4), Æ 34mm., 25.42g. AYT K T AI Λ AΔR ANTΩNEINOC EYC-EB Laureate head r. Rev. Herakles and the monster Echidna: L TETA-PTOY, Herakles, nude except for lion's skin around neck, advancing left, brandishing club over head and extending left arm from which several serpents dangle; anguipede giantess right at his feet to left, extending left hand and holding breast with right. Geissen 1347; Dattari 2597 (this coin) and Pl. XV, 2597 (this coin). Dattari-Savio Pl., 130, 2597 (this coin). Milne 1681b. Voegtli 12e (this coin illustrated). Extremely rare and interesting. Attractive brown tone. Good Very Fine. From the Dattari collection. According to Hesiod's Theogony, Echidna was a monstrous she-dragon with the head and the breast of a woman and the tail of a serpent. Hesiod describes Echidna as a as a flesh eating monster, irresistible", who was like neither "mortal men" nor "the undying gods", but was "half a nymph with glancing eyes and fair cheeks, and half again a huge snake, great and awful, with speckled skin", who "dies not nor grows old all her days." She was the consort of Typhoeus a multi-headed storm giant who dared to challenge Zeus for rule of the cosmos. Together they spawned a variety of monsters to plague the earth including the Chimaera, the many-headed dog Orthus, the hundred headed dragon who guarded the apples of the Hesperides, the Colchian dragon, the Sphinx, Cerberus, Scylla, Gorgon, the Lernaean Hydra, the eagle which consumed the liver of Prometheus, and the Nemean lion. They lived with in a cave in the country of the Arimi, whereas the Greeks on the Euxine conceived her to have lived in Scythia, When Heracles, they said, carried away the oxen of Geryones, he also visited the country of the Scythians, which was then still desert. Once while he was asleep there his horses suddenly disappeared, and when he woke and started searching for them, he "found in a cave a creature of double form that was half maiden and half serpent; above the buttocks she was a woman, below them a snake." When he asked whether she knew anything about his horses, she replied that they were in her own possession but that she would not give them up, unless he would consent to stay with her for a time. Heracles accepted the request and became by her the father of Agathyrsus, Gelonus, and Scythes. The last of them became king of the Scythians, according to his father's arrangement, because he was the only one among the three brothers that was able to manage the bow which Heracles had left behind, and to use his father's girdle. Although for Hesiod, Echidna was immortal and ageless, according to Apollodorus, Echidna was killed, while she slept, by Argus Panoptes the hundred-eyed giant who served Hera. " Estimate: 300 GBP |  |
