Stater: Head (obverse); Horse with Victory (reverse) (c. 125–100 BCE): Art, History and Details

Stater: Head (obverse); Horse with Victory (reverse) (c. 125–100 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Like many other pieces in the ancient British series of staters, those of the Bellovaci, which were struck on the mainland of Europe and in Britain, take their type from the gold staters of Philip II of Macedon (359–336 BC). This original coin was copied and recopied over a long period of time, the copies becoming on occasion very crude pieces. The head on the piece shown is a run-down form of the head of Philip while the reverse is all that is left of the chariot of Apollo, the Sun God, and its driver.

Object facts

• Title: Stater: Head (obverse); Horse with Victory (reverse)
• Date: c. 125–100 BCE
• Culture: England
• Type: Coins
• Technique: gold
• Dimensions: Diameter: 2.3 cm (7/8 in.)
• Collection: MED - Numismatics
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1969.143

A detail from the museum

The Bellovaci were a Belgic tribe located near the present-day city of Beauvais, France, during the Iron Age and the Roman period.

Collection credit

The Norweb Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, and Emery May Norweb. English Gold Coins, Ancient to Modern Times, On Loan to the Cleveland Museum of Art from the Norweb Collection. 1968.
• Emery May Norweb Collection (Cleveland, Ohio), Emery May Norweb, C. E. Blunt, F. Elmore Jones, and R. P. Mack. Collection of Ancient British, Romano-British and English Coins. London: Spink, 1971.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.