201, Lot: 63. Estimate $100. Sold for $525. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

ATTICA, Athens. Circa 340-335 BC. Æ 16mm (3.35 g, 9h). Eleusinian festival coinage. Triptolemus seated left in winged chariot drawn by two serpents / Piglet standing right on mystic staff; vine around. Kroll 38d-g; SNG Copenhagen 420-3. Good Fine, dark brown patina, lighter highlights.

From the J. S. Wagner Collection.

This statue of Triptolemos was presumably still in its temple when Pausanias (I. 38, 6) visited Eleusis in about AD 160: " The Eleusians have a temple to Triptolemos... They say that the plain called Rharion was the first to be sown and the first to grow crops... Here is shown a threshing floor and altar. My dream forbade the description of the things within the wall of the sanctuary, and the uninitiated are of course not permitted to learn that which they are prevented from seeing."