Thrace, Abdera
Stater circa 411-385, AR 12.91g. Griffin springing l. Rev. EΠ API – ΣTA – ΓOPE – Ω Dionysus seated l. on the back of a panther advancing r., holding a cantharus and a thyrsus. All within a shallow incuse square. Gillet 837 (this obverse die). Chryssantaki-Nagle p. 123 (dating circa 361 BC). May, Abdera 398 var. (different reverse die).
Extremely rare. A very interesting and appealing reverse composition,
lovely light iridescent tone and about extremely fine

Ex Giessener Münzhandlung 44, 1989, 155 and New York XXVII, 2012, Prospero, 228 sales.
In 544 BC, a group of Teans fleeing the Persian conquest of Ionia arrived at the site of an old failed colony of Clazomenae on the southern coast of Thrace. Despite the failure of the original settlement, the Teans believed that the site still had merit and used it to found their own city, which they named Abdera. The city grew so wealthy from trade with the Thracian peoples of the interior that when Xerxes I mounted his invasion of mainland Greece in 480 BC, Abdera was given the dubious honour of hosting the Persian king and his vast army as it passed through the region. Xerxes reportedly acknowledged the hospitality of Abdera by presenting the city with a golden tiara and scimitar. Through much of the fifth and early fourth century BC, the prosperity of Abdera continued to grow although the city was frequently under Athenian influence. However, calamity struck in 376/5 BC when Abdera’s jealous neighbour Maroneia assisted the Thracian Triballi in attacking the city. Abdera was only saved by the timely arrival of the Athenian general Chabrias, but the destruction wrought by the Triballi was so great that the city never fully recovered. By the mid-fourth century BC, the city had fallen into the hands of Philip II and many of the Abderites fled to Athens to avoid living under Macedonian rule. Abdera was one of the earliest Greek mints to strike coins in Thrace, beginning around 520/515 BC. The obverse of the city’s coinage regularly featured an eagle-griffin derived from the civic badge of Teos, the mother city of Abdera. On issues of the late sixth and early fifth century BC, the reverse usually carried a quadripartite incuse square, but in the late fifth and early fourth centuries BC the reverse type was frequently (perhaps on an annual basis) changed along with the name of the magistrate who signed there. The legend on the present coin indicates that it was struck while a certain Aristagoreus was in office, probably as the city’s eponymous priest of Dionysus or Apollo. The remarkable type depicts Dionysus riding on the back of a giant panther in a manner reminiscent of later fifth-century depictions of the god riding on an ass found on the coins of Mende in Macedonia.