MYSIA. Kyzikos. Circa 450-330 BC. Stater (Electrum, 21 mm, 16.08 g, 12 h). Head of a nymph to right, her hair in a sakkos and an ampyx; below, tunny to right. Rev. Quadripartite incuse square. BMC -. Boston MFA 1508 = Warren 1501. Gulbenkian -. Jameson -. SNG Paris -. SNG von Aulock -. Von Fritze I, 136 and pl. IV, 22. Extremely rare and among the finest of the very few known examples, with a remarkably well-centered Syracusan obverse. A few faint marks, otherwise, very fine.


The model for this striking female head can be identified with unusual precision. Greenwell already recognised the type as a direct adaptation of a Syracusan tetradrachm, and the prototype may be identified with Boehringer 642, struck at Syracuse around 430-420 BC. On that issue Arethusa appears to right with her hair enclosed in a patterned sakkos, and the correspondence with the Kyzikene type extends well beyond the general profile to the arrangement and ornament of the headdress. There can be little doubt that the engraver at Kyzikos was closely familiar with the Syracusan model.

Yet the image has been thoroughly recast in Kyzikene terms. The dolphins and ethnic that accompany Arethusa at Syracuse have disappeared, while the tunny beneath the head immediately places the image within the visual language of Kyzikos. The coin thus offers an unusually clear example of how the Kyzikene mint appropriated a celebrated foreign type and transformed it into something recognizably its own.