Sale: Triton VII, Lot: 158. Estimate $7500.  Closing Date: Monday, 12 January 2004.  Sold For $6000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

THRACE, Abdera. Circa 473-448 BC. AR Tetradrachm (14.56 gm). Magistrate Herodotos (II). Griffin seated left, right foreleg raised; cock standing left before / EP HRODOTO around incuse square with raised quadripartite square in center. May, Abdera 132 (A111/P108); AMNG II 50; BMC Thrace pg. 67, 21 (same dies); SNG Copenhagen -; SNG Spencer-Churchill 98 (same dies). EF. [See color enlargement on plate 5] ($7500)

Superior to the specimen sold in Kunstfreund (Leu & Münzen und Medaillen, 28 May 1974), lot 131, which realized 46,000 Sfr.

These two Abdera tetradrachms, lots 157 and 158, arguably are from the most accomplished period of art at this important mint. They straddle the line between the fully Archaic and the early Classical periods, adopting the best features of both categories of art. Here the noble, rigid form of the griffin is preserved from the earliest coins, yet the body is enlivened as if in arrested motion, and its structure is enlarged to consume a larger portion of the die. The net effect is a fiercer creature: on the earlier piece, lot 157, both of the griffin’s forearms are raised as if the image was captured just at the moment it was starting to pounce; the later issue, struck on the border of the transition from Archaic to Classical art, recalls the more serene version in which only one paw is raised. The subsequent Classical issues lose the nobility of the Archaic version, and replace the vigor of the ones illustrated here with a more tranquil version of this mythological creature, which in many cases appears to be pouncing playfully rather than fiercely.