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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;zumbly, post: 2598666, member: 57495&quot;]If my last coin purchases of the year don&#039;t reach me in the next week or so, the two coins that dropped into the mail box today will be my last NEWP arrivals of 2016.&nbsp; Both are great coins, but this is the one I&#039;m all excited about.&nbsp; It&#039;s a rare diobol of Tarentum which shows on its reverse baby Herakles wrestling two snakes.&nbsp; Word of caution : if you don&#039;t like scenes of hapless animals getting the life squeezed out of them by infant demigods, now is the time to hit the Back button.</p><p><br /></p><p>One of Zeus&#039;s many trysts with a mortal woman was with Alkmene, the wife of King Amphitryon of Thebes.&nbsp; Hera, Zeus&#039;s own wife, quickly transfered the jealousy she felt at his infidelity to the baby boy that Alkmene eventually gave birth to.&nbsp; One can further imagine her being less than amused when the child was named Herakles, &quot;the glorious gift of Hera&quot;.&nbsp; As a final dose of cosmically ironic insult added to injury, Hera once even allowed Herakles to nurse from her breast, not knowing his identity, and in the process giving him additional divine powers.&nbsp; Her slightly poor reaction to all this was to send two monstrous snakes to kill the baby in his crib.&nbsp; Naturally, this didn&#039;t succeed, and the infant demigod took up the serpents like playthings and strangled them to death, thus accomplishing his first heroic deed and earning himself the name <i>Herakliskos Drakonopignon</i>, Herakles the Snake-Strangler.</p><p><br /></p><p>Please feel free to show your diobols of Tarentum or any coins with baby Herakles!</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]566866[/ATTACH]</p><p><b>CALABRIA, Tarentum</b></p><p><b>Circa 275-212 BC</b></p><p>AR Diobol. 0.98g, 10mm. Vlasto 1460-1461; HN Italy 1068. O: Head of Athena right, wearing crested helmet, decorated with Skylla. R: Herakliskos Drakonopignon: the infant demigod Herakles strangling two snakes; ΦIN monogram to left, [ΛE (ligate)] in exergue.</p><p><i>Ex E.E. Clain Stefanelli Collection</i></p><p>Notes: <i>Rare. Of the 195 diobols recorded in the Taranto Hoard of 1883, only 11 feature this reverse type, and of those all have Athena facing left and not right. The Vlasto Collection included 2 specimens, with Athena&#039;s helmet decoration described as &quot;Sea-horse(?)&quot; due to wear and slightly poor centering. This example, despite its odd-shaped flan, has a complete helmet that quite clearly shows the device is the Skylla, as on the more common variety with Athena facing left.</i>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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