The M.L. Collection of Coins of Magna Graecia and Sicily Croton Nomos circa 380-350, AR 7.78 g. Head of Hera Lacinia facing, wearing decorated stephane. Rev. [KRO] – TWNI – ATAN Young Heracles seated l. on lion’s skin, holding jug in outstretched r. hand and club resting on ground in l.; in lower r. field, bow. SNG ANS 374 (these dies). SNG Lockett 630 (this obverse die). AMB 198 (this reverse die). Historia Numorum Italy 2167. Very rare. An enchanting portrait of sublime beauty and the work of a very skilled engraver. Struck in high relief on sound metal and good extremely fine Ex NAC sale 7, 1997, 176.The designs on this masterful nomos are boastful celebrations of the issuing city, as Croton controlled the famous sanctuary of Hera Lacinia on the nearby Lacinian promontory, and it counted Heracles as its founder. As tranquil as the images of Hera and Heracles appear, this coin would seem to have been struck in a particularly troublesome era. Jenkins associates it with the period in which the Syracusan tyrant Dionysius I meddled in the affairs of South Italy, and ruled over Croton for a dozen years. It is generally believed that this majestic portrait of Hera Lacinia is derived from Cimon’s immensely influential facing Arethusa at Syracuse. Katherine Erhart, in her 1978 doctoral thesis on the facing head motif on Greek coins, notes that this image of Hera Lacinia was copied on coinages of other cities in South Italy, including Pandosia, Fenseria, Hyria, Phistelia, Neapolis, Poseidonia, Thurium and Nola, though in each case with lesser degrees of success than seen on the present coin. The depiction of Heracles Epitrapezeus (”Heracles at the table”) lounging as he holds aloft a cup of wine bears all the hallmarks of statuary captured on a miniature scale. The observations of Phyllis Lehman in her 1946 study of statuary on Greek coins are of great interest. She notes (p.40): ”The highly plastic quality of the reverse type, the rendering of the vigorous body, suggests the likelihood that this numismatic image reflects a statuary prototype. Such details as the inclination of the head, the lowering of the extended arm until it almost rests upon the right thigh, and the foreshortened left leg appear to be concessions made by a skilled die- cutter in adapting a three-dimensional plastic type to a flat, circular field. This hypothesis is strongly reinforced by the analogy between the numismatic type and a group of statues commonly considered to be replicas of the Herakles Epitrapezios of Lyssipos. The relationship is so striking that one is forced to conclude that Lyssipos either based his work upon an earlier numismatic type whose plastic potentialities he divined or, what is far more probable, that he derived his conception from an older statuary type which is also reflected on the coinage of Croton.”