Mysia, Cyzicus
Stater circa 460-420, EL 15.97 g. Silenus, with horse’s ear and tail, kneeling r., holding in his outstretched r. hand cantharus into which he is pouring wine from amphora balanced on l. leg and steadied by l. arm and head. Below, tunny fish. Rev. Quadripartite incuse square. Boston 1505. von Fritze 172 and pl. V, 20. Greenwell, NC 1887, 42 and pl. II, 20. Kraay-Hirmer 707. Gulbenkian 641. SNG France 318.
Very rare. A very interesting composition of excellent style, good very fine

Ex Glendining 10 December 1986, Knoepke, 253 and New York XXVII, 2012, Prospero, 454 sales.
Dionysiac themes are commonly represented in Greek art, especially on vessels and coins. At Cyzicus, a city famous for its heady white wine, there are three closely related issues of electrum staters (von Fritze 171-173) that show satyrs (Sileni), primal creatures with the forms of men and the ears and tail of animals. Their fine style is so close to one another that we may suggest the same artist was responsible for the engraving of the dies for all three. One of these shows a satyr seated and holding an uncertain object, whereas the other two show satyrs crouching with amphorae, the vessels in which wine was stored and transported. Of the latter two, one shows the mythological creature drinking directly from the mouth of an amphora which he raises. In his 1887 corpus of Cyzicene electrum, Greenwell notes that in that instance the neck of the fluted amphora is broken, and that wine appears to be overflowing the satyr's mouth. On the stater offered here the satyr is shown in a more traditional Dionysiac pose, clutching an amphora with his left arm and balancing it on his left knee to allow him to fill a two-handled drinking cup (cantharus).