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Greek city of Alaisa Archonidea in Sicily
Bronze 17mm (3.47 grams) Struck circa 95-44 B.C.
Reference: HGC 2, 198 Rare R2; CNS I, pp. 60-61, nos. 6-6 mv 1.
Laureate head of Apollo right.
ΑΛΑΙΣΑΣ, Apollo standing left holding laurel branch and leaning on kithara (lyre); monogram in field to left.
Archonides II, who was a Sicilian dynast of Herbita and a native, founded a new city on the northern coast of Sicily. To distinguish it from another city by the same name, it was called it Alaisa Archonidea, “Archonidean Alaisa”. There were poor colonists from the town of Herbita settled there. However it’s main purpose was to re-settle mercenaries who came to Herbita to fight the Syracusan tyranny of Dionysios I in 404-403 B.C.
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 In Greek and Roman mythology, Apollo, is one of the most important and diverse of the Olympian deities. The ideal of the kouros (a beardless youth), Apollo has been variously recognized as a god of light and the sun; truth and prophecy; archery; medicine and healing; music, poetry, and the arts; and more. Apollo is the son of Zeus and Leto, and has a twin sister, the chaste huntress Artemis. Apollo is known in Greek-influenced Etruscan mythology as Apulu. Apollo was worshiped in both ancient Greek and Roman religion, as well as in the modern Greco–Roman Neopaganism.
As the patron of Delphi (Pythian Apollo), Apollo was an oracular god — the prophetic deity of the Delphic Oracle. Medicine and healing were associated with Apollo, whether through the god himself or mediated through his son Asclepius, yet Apollo was also seen as a god who could bring ill-health and deadly plague as well as one who had the ability to cure. Amongst the god’s custodial charges, Apollo became associated with dominion over colonists, and as the patron defender of herds and flocks. As the leader of the Muses (Apollon Musagetes) and director of their choir, Apollo functioned as the patron god of music and poetry. Hermes created the lyre for him, and the instrument became a common attribute of Apollo. Hymns sung to Apollo were called paeans.
In Hellenistic times, especially during the third century BCE, as Apollo Helios he became identified among Greeks with Helios, god of the sun, and his sister Artemis similarly equated with Selene, goddess of the moon. In Latin texts, on the other hand, Joseph Fontenrose declared himself unable to find any conflation of Apollo with Sol among the Augustan poets of the first century, not even in the conjurations of Aeneas and Latinus in Aeneid XII (161–215). Apollo and Helios/Sol remained separate beings in literary and mythological texts until the third century CE.
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