It used to be believed that this figure was originally part of a group, with the satyr tapping a foot clapper (scabellum) and snapping his fingers to encourage a nymph, missing from the group, to join him in dancing. This hypothesis was based on coins which depict a similar figure with such a partner. This theory is now doubted; his arms were restored in the seventeenth century, so the small cymbal in his hand is inauthentic
Unknown. Similar one in Florence, Uffizi 546
Transferred from the Fitzwilliam Museum in 1884
Lippold: Griechische Plastik, 320 (n.5)
Amelung: Führer durch die Antike in Florenz (1896), 43, no.65
Walston: Catalogue of Casts in the Museum of Classical Archaeology (1889), 93, no.503
cf. Lawrence: Later Greek Sculpture (1927), 19, pl. 30b and Lippold: pl. 113.3 & pl. 136.28 for coin of Cyzicus showing group
cf. Haskell & Penny: Taste and the Antique (1981), 205 for Uffizi faun
Ridgway, B: Hellenistic Sculpture I (1990), 321
Ridgway, B: Hellenistic Sculpture III (2002), 50
