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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;zumbly, post: 2054433, member: 57495&quot;]From my small but growing group of coins from Troas, I&#039;m showing two that have some interesting connections to the Trojan War.</p><p><br /></p><p>First up is a scarce little piece from Ophrynion, showing a three-quarter facing bust of Hector.&nbsp; Hector was the eldest son of King Priam of Troy and the city&#039;s greatest champion.&nbsp; During the Trojan War, he defeated and killed the Greek hero Protesilaus, dueled Ajax the Great for an entire day to a stalemate, and finally, was overcome and slain by Achilles.&nbsp; Ophrynion is traditionally held to be the site of Hector&#039;s tomb, and accordingly its handful of issues celebrate him.&nbsp; As a bonus, the reverse of this one has a chubby baby Dionysos holding out a bunch of grapes.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]377915[/ATTACH]</p><p><b>TROAS, Ophrynion</b></p><p>Circa 350-300 BC</p><p>AE12</p><p>1.9g, 12mm</p><p>SNG Copenhagen 456-9; SNG von Aulock 1559; BMC p.75, 4-7.</p><p>O: Bearded head of Hektor three-quarter facing right, wearing crested helmet.</p><p>R: ΟΦΡ[Υ], infant Dionysos naked, kneeling right, holding out bunch of grapes in right hand.</p><p><br /></p><p>This is a coin I really wouldn&#039;t mind upgrading at some point, but probably not at the price fetched at auction by this example last September :</p><p><a href="http://www.sixbid.com/browse.html?auction=1487&amp;category=31621&amp;lot=1343144" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.sixbid.com/browse.html?auction=1487&amp;category=31621&amp;lot=1343144" rel="nofollow">http://www.sixbid.com/browse.html?auction=1487&amp;category=31621&amp;lot=1343144</a></p><p><br /></p><p>It seems that these used to be quite rare, but more have been turning up and Pecunem auctioned a couple of decent ones for about $100 last year.&nbsp; Mine is one of those &quot;uniformly found worn and corroded&quot;, so it&#039;s a good thing it was about a hundred times cheaper than the Roma example.&nbsp; While there&#039;s no doubting that piece is very nice (&quot;for this issue&quot; or no), I wonder how much of its GBP 1100 closing was contributed to by the nice writeup in the auction that quoted the passage from the Iliad about Hector&#039;s funeral procession.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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