Greek Coins
Uncertain mint
Stater circa 480, AR 8.75 g. Winged male figure, wearing chiton , kneeling r.; around, three pellets. In r. field, lotus flower (partially out of flan). Rev. Rough quadripartite incuse square. Traité I, pl. 59, 6. Svoronos, Hellénisme Primitif pl. XVIII, 6. Price, Macedonians, pl. 1, 8. SNG ANS 1010.
Very rare. A very interesting representation of superb Archaic style struck
in high relief. Lovely old cabinet tone and about extremely fine Ex Feuardent 9 May 1910, G. Duruflé, 317; Naville I, 1920, Pozzi 2067; Leu-M&M 28 May 1974, Kunstfreund 41; Leu 48, 1989, 137 and Leu 76, 1999, 86 sales.

The running, winged man on this remarkable stater-didrachm is among the most intriguing of all early Macedonian coins. Head, Babelon, Svoronos, Waggoner and Wartenberg all describe this issue as having emanated from an undetermined mint, though Kraay proposes that it may have been produced at Acanthus prior to the introduction of its tetradrachms.

On this example the running figure is nude, except for a tunic; wings emerge at his hips and a lotus flower or ‘rose’ is engraved in the field before him. Svoronos illustrates a few variants of the type, all clearly related. On some examples the subject is a woman clothed in a long garment from the waist down; she maintains the same running position as our winged male, though both of her arms point downward. On a most divergent example a woman runs while virtually upright, and instead of flowers as ornaments in the field there is a heavy, ornate, cord border. On some examples with the winged male it is clear that he holds some kind of pelleted orb or disc.

It has long been recognised that the lotus flower or ‘rose’ is a design element that unites a relatively diverse group of Thraco-Macedonian silver coins of the Archaic period. It occurs on coins of Abdera, the Derrones and Olynthus, and is a prominent and recurring feature of coins of Acanthus. It also appears conspicuously on those issues usually attributed to Stageira or Methone which depict flowers arranged in a circular pattern that sometimes is interrupted by a standing boar.