CORINTHIA, Corinth. Circa 345 – 307 BC. Silver stater

CORINTHIA, Corinth. Circa 345 – 307 BC. Silver stater (Pegasi standard, c. 8.57 g), NGC-graded AU; Strike 5/5, Surface 5/5.

Obverse: Pegasos, the winged horse, flying left; beneath, the Corinthian koppa (Ϙ) control mark. Reverse: Head of Athena left, wearing Corinthian helmet adorned with a laurel wreath; her curls fall in tidy ringlets at the neck; behind, a small boar symbol. Finely centred and sharply struck on a broad, lustrous flan; light cabinet tone picks out the bridle and feather-shaft detail on Pegasos’ wings.

For three centuries these “pegasi” staters functioned as the hard currency of western Greece and the Adriatic, accepted from Sicily to Cyrenaica and even in the ports of Magna Graecia. Their success lay in Corinth’s command of maritime trade: merchants carried the instantly recognisable Pegasos—born of Poseidon and tamed by Bellerophon—as a guarantee of full-weight silver, while the helmeted Athena on the reverse proclaimed the city’s patroness and its mastery of both war and craft. In the turbulent decades after the Peloponnesian War Corinth rebuilt her fortunes on overseas commerce; this late Classical issue, struck just before the Macedonian conquest, represents the high-point of that independent prosperity and the last flowering of the Corinthian style before Alexander’s coinage swept the markets. Choice staters with full detail, such as the present piece, stand today as tangible relics of the city whose wealth inspired the proverb “Not for every man is the voyage to Corinth.”