Very rare hekte depicting a kalathiskos dancer
Lot 64
LESBOS. Mytilene. Circa 412-378 BC. Hekte (Electrum, 10.5 mm, 2.52 g, 9 h). Head of Dionysos to right, with a dapper, curly moustache and a pointed beard, and wearing an ivy wreath. Rev. Head of a kalathiskos dancer to right, in a square linear border within an incuse square. Bodenstadt 76 (Vs a/Rs α, same dies). SNG von Aulock 7729 (Bod. 76.3). Very rare, Bodenstedt only knew of 5 examples. An intriguing coin with elegant and unusual "portraits". Very fine.
From a European collection, ex Hess 251, 7 May 1981, 76.
A kalathiskos dancer was a young, female dancer, wearing a short chiton and a small, basket-like headdress (kalathos = basket and -iskos = "a noun forming diminutive suffix"). For information on such dancers see, J. Habetzeder, Dancing with decorum. The eclectic usage of kalthiskos dancers and pyrrhic dancers in Roman visual culture, Opuscula 5 (2012), pp. 7-47.
