Sale: Triton V, Lot: 1098. Estimate $5000.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 16 January 2002.  Sold For $7500. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

LUCANIA, Metapontion Circa 375 BC. Obverse die signed by the artist Aristoxenos. AR Nomos (7.61 gm). Head of Demeter left wearing necklace, triple-pendant earring and wreath of olive leaves; ARISTOXE in small letters on the truncation of the neck / META right, seven-grained barley ear with leaf to left. Noe 422 (same dies); SNG ANS 325 (same dies); SNG Lloyd 341 (same dies). Lightly toned, superb EF, light marks visible with a glass on the obverse. Fine style. ($5000)

Aristoxenos has not handed down to us enough information to name this rather melancholy, middle-aged woman, any more than the young girl of the same style, Noe 421. Noe calls her Demeter; if so they are mother and daughter and both are masterly studies. It is to be noted that a contemporary issue, Noe 412 explicitly tells us with an epithet that we are looking at the bust of Hygieia, and from this it is not unimaginable to conclude that the coinage of Metapontum may be celebrating the whole pantheon of beautiful female deities.