Exceptional Early Thasos Stater

Sale: CNG 79, Lot: 129. Estimate $5000.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 17 September 2008.  Sold For $5250. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

ISLANDS off THRACE, Thasos. Circa 500-463 BC. AR Stater (9.50 g). Satyr advancing right, carrying protesting nymph / Quadripartite incuse square. Le Rider, Thasiennes 2; SNG Copenhagen 1009. Superb EF, attractively toned. Overstruck on uncertain type.

Ritual abduction as a form of exogamy was, and is still, frequent in tribal society. The reference here is probably to the Dionysiac cult and is modeled on one of the stone reliefs for which Thasos is famous. For another archaic treatment on the same theme from Delphi, see Boardman, Greek Sculpture: the Archaic Period, fig. 210.

The overtly sexual displays seen on many early Greek coins can be disconcerting to the modern eye, viewing them through the lens of centuries of Christian fulminations against ‘paganism’ and its erotic excesses. These scenes are at their most graphic in northern Greece, for example, on the archaic coins of Siris (‘Lete’) and the island of Thasos, showing the interplay of nymphs and satyrs. The towns and tribes of this region were only newly introduced to the ‘civilizing’ influences of the south, and were still close to their roots in farming and herding cultures. Their gods were not the Olympian super beings, but the spirits of nature, and the emphasis was on celebrating the fecundity of fields and flocks.