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Lot Essay
Philetairos, son of Attalos, was from the Greek city of Tius in the Propontis. He served as an administrator under Lysimachus, who was one of Alexander the Great's successors. After Lysimachus secured the Macedonian war chest, the booty of Alexander's conquest of Achaemenid Persia, he entrusted a share to Philetairos, which he guarded in the fortress city of Pergamon. He maintained his loyalty to Lysimachus until court intrigues endangered his position, and then switched allegiance to Seleucus Nicator of Syria. After Seleucus's defeat of Lysimachus in 281 B.C., he retained Philetairos as governor of Pergamon, and left the treasure in his care. Under his watch, Pergamon became one of the most important cities of the Hellenistic world (see Davis and Kraay, The Hellenistic Kingdoms, Portrait Coins and History, pp. 250-252).
Philetairos neither took the title of king, nor used his own portrait on coins. His image is known chiefly from coins minted by his successors, which may duplicate a now-lost statue from the acropolis of Pergamon created during his lifetime or shortly after his death in 263 B.C. On the basis of its similarity to the coin portraits, a marble herm from the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum has also been identified as a depiction of Philetairos. The herm portrait presented here is only the second known version of the type; the fine quality of the sculpture, especially in the treatment of the hair, suggests a late Hellenistic date, so probably a century earlier than the Roman example from Herculaneum. For the coin portrait see Kraay and Davis, op. cit., no. 184; for the Herculaneum herm see Smith, Hellenistic Royal Portraits, pp. 74-75 and no. 22, p. 159.
Philetairos neither took the title of king, nor used his own portrait on coins. His image is known chiefly from coins minted by his successors, which may duplicate a now-lost statue from the acropolis of Pergamon created during his lifetime or shortly after his death in 263 B.C. On the basis of its similarity to the coin portraits, a marble herm from the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum has also been identified as a depiction of Philetairos. The herm portrait presented here is only the second known version of the type; the fine quality of the sculpture, especially in the treatment of the hair, suggests a late Hellenistic date, so probably a century earlier than the Roman example from Herculaneum. For the coin portrait see Kraay and Davis, op. cit., no. 184; for the Herculaneum herm see Smith, Hellenistic Royal Portraits, pp. 74-75 and no. 22, p. 159.