Tetradrachm AR 30 mm, 17,12 g
Diademed and horned head of young Demetrios right / ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΔΗΜΗΤΡΙΟΥ, poseidon standing left resting foot on rock, monograms at either side.
Newell 90
While this coin of Demetrios Poliorketes is known to many as one of the earliest depictions of a ruler on a coin, what is less known is the reverse shows a detailed image of what we believe to be the Lateran Poseidon, sculpted by the famed Lysippos.
Lysippos was the court sculptor of Alexander the Great and was likely chosen to emphasize Demetrios’ victory off the coast of Cyprus in 306 BCE. I even wonder whether Demetrios comissioned Lysippos to make this very sculpture. A small copy, likely from Roman times, exists in the British Museum as part of the Louis, Duc de Blacas d’Aulps collection acquired in 1867.
Lysippos was born in Sikyon around 390 BCE and died in roughly 300 BCE in Sikyon, so if the above is true this would have been one of his last works. Griffin, in her work on Sikyon, believes his terminus post quem to be 316 BCE, when Kassander comissioned him to create a special shape of jar for exporting wine from Kassandreia.
Here is what she says about this work:
“He also made a statue of Poseidon for the Korinthians, which may in fact have been the cult-statue in the temple at Isthmia. It is commonly identified as a type with the right foot raised on a rock or similar object, the right arm resting on the raised knee, and the trident in the left hand. This type is known in many copies, and also appears on coins of Demetrios Polrioketes, who, as head of the Korinthian League and effective controller of the Aegean, could appropriately use as a coin-device a statue of the sea-god from Korinth or Isthmia. The copies and most of the coins show the god bearded, but some of the coins give him a beardless, youthful face, probably that of Demetrios himself.”
Looking at my example, he doesn’t look beardless or youthful, so this one is presumably closer to the actual statue.