MYSIA. Kyzikos. Circa 450-330 BC. Stater (Electrum, 22 mm, 16.00 g, 12 h). Triptolemos in chariot drawn by two winged serpents right, holding two grain ears in his left hand and resting his right on wing of nearer serpent; below, tunny to left. Rev. Quadripartite incuse square. BMC 63. Boston MFA 1498 = Warren 1435. SNG Paris 314. Von Fritze I, 163 and pl. V, 11. Very rare. Struck on a somewhat irregular flan and with some edge cracks, otherwise, good very fine.


Triptolemos, the Eleusinian hero entrusted by Demeter with bringing the cultivation of grain to mankind, is shown here setting out on his beneficent mission in a chariot drawn by winged serpents, two ears of grain held in his hand. The Kyzikene engraver has reduced the familiar composition with remarkable economy: the chariot itself is almost entirely suppressed, leaving only part of a wheel visible beneath the serpent’s wing, while Triptolemos, the grain and the fantastic draught animals are allowed to fill the field.

The subject belongs to the same distinctly Atticizing world as several other types in the electrum coinage of Kyzikos. Closely comparable representations of Triptolemos occur on the coinages of Eleusis and Athens, and Greenwell already connected the Kyzikene type with the city’s long relationship with Athens. More than a simple mythological scene, the image evokes one of the central Eleusinian ideas: the transmission of agriculture, and with it civilized life, from Attica to the wider world.