I started this series with a diobol and I am finishing it with another. Collectors of ancient Greek coins have limited choices on obtaining a coin depicting the facing head of Athena. The most famous example being a tetradrachm of Syracuse by Eukleidas, but at half a million Swiss francs it is out of reach for most collectors. The example on the right fetched a hammer price of only $202 US. While it was circulating in Italy, Archimedes was running naked through the streets of Syracuse shouting "Eureka". The coins of Taras are very popular with collectors because of their attractiveness and the fact that you do not need to be wealthy to collect them. The people of Taras, at that time these coins were issued would have been overjoyed that their coins were being appreciated in a world far larger than they knew more than two thousand years later. Most of those issues (and the same is true for all Greek city-states) bore designs to promote their city and culture. Today, we call this "branding".
The mythological types of Greek coins reveal how mythology was reinterpreted anew for each place and time and that is the nature of cultures. What is current, now, is obsolete tomorrow; new deities are constructed from the remains of old deities. If cultures are to survive at all, in minds, they have to connect in a very personal manner. I connected with the sea monster Skylla on a fishing trip off the coast of British Columbia and that event will be in my mind each time I see Skylla on a helmet design. Had I not bought a corroded Celtic coin from Seaby in London when I was about fifteen years old, I would never have written my book, nor put the Celtic Coin Index on line. Not once, though, did any visit to a museum ever change my life. Locked away in cabinets; behind glass, or with museum staff making sure that you do not touch, the cultures are killed because we can no longer connect with them in a personal way.
Even this series would have been impossible without CNG's policy of allowing the use of their many photographs to be used as I have used them here. Most museums will charge exorbitant sums for such use. A few, like the British Museum and a couple of American museums do allow such usage but others, like the Museum of London will not even allow you to sketch something. The sterilized remains of culture are being held for ransom.
While the very small silver denominations of Taras are a good choice for collectors with a limited budget and that can include some rare types, the drachms are a large enough denomination to interest most collectors but they are not often seen. This means that they are usually more costly than the staters.
The identity of the female head on the first coin is uncertain, perhaps a Nereid such as Amphitrite, perhaps Aphrodite. Like devices on most of the coins of Taras, both are connected with the sea. The obverse continues the nautical themes with its hippocamp and shell. There are some later drachms of the same type as the staters, but I cannot find one to illustrate and even Vlasto had only a few.
The late fourth to early third century drachms, like the diobols, have little reference to the sea at all and a novice seeing one might well think the drachm was an issue of Athens. Evans explains:
"It is probable that the Tarentine drachms with these Athenian types were originally struck not for internal circulation so much as a part of the federal currency of the Italiote League, and it is noteworthy that a considerable proportion of the diobols belonging to this same federal series, presenting on one side the head of Pallas and on the other Herakles strangling the lion, which, to judge from their fabric, belong to the same approximate date as these early drachms, were struck on the same reduced standard."
So far in this series I have shown many coins that are well out of the price range of the young collector but those coins have been mostly the larger denominations. Popularity drives the market and small Greek silver coins are not in high demand at this time. When I was a kid, this was slightly less evident and it was the bronze coinage that could be bought for very little. Nowadays, Greek bronze coins are more popular and many are well beyond the price range of kids. Even bulk lots of "junk" Greek bronze fetch more than their Roman counterparts.
Unlike the larger denominations, small silver coins such as the obol were the daily currency at the market while a stater would be about a day's pay for a labourer. Here in Calgary, the legal minimum wage is $11.20 per hour and a frugal shopper can easily pay that for an entire day's groceries for one person. I do even better but I mostly cook from basic ingredients and avoid processed food. The other day I made my own cream cheese and added some smoked salmon. Much better that the store-bought version which contains carageenan (and is a little shy in the smoked salmon). Of course, the ancient Greeks cooked like I do. They also lived long lives and part of that was due to their diet.
A little frugality in buying ancient coins is also a good idea, and auctions can sometimes deliver the unexpected. The tiny coin on the left (much smaller than an obol) was estimated at $150 but got a hammer price of $1200. Perhaps this is a typo, perhaps there were two people bidding that had more money than sense, I don't know. But you will notice, that a month later, the same coin type was sold as part of the lot illustrated above (1) and the whole lot only fetched a hammer price of $300, two hundred below its pre-sale estimate. The same coin type, in 2013, got a hammer price of 110 GBP.
Back in the mid eighties, when Calgary was in the midst of a severe recession and when I applied for a job that had two hundred applicants, my wife and I decided to run a flea market business. We survived quite well. Mind you, we had six tables and sold everything: housewares, books, records, collectables, you name it. One oil company owner used to spend $200 with us at each visit as part of his Sunday routine (the market ran only on Sundays). One day, a small boy sat at one of our tables for hours, carefully going through a box of junk Roman coins we were selling at a dollar each. Finally, he handed me one coin and his dollar. I looked at the coin and said "This is a coin of Eugenius, but it is a bit small and it's not in very good condition so it's only worth about a hundred dollars." The chances of finding such a coin is remote, rather like a big win on a lottery and dealers do not waste their time looking for such, but even if that boy had a very good after-school job, his hourly pay could hardly match what he made that day.
I started this series with an photo of a diobol of Taras which was one of the first Greek coins I owned. In this episode I will start with another example to illustrate how a multidisciplinary approach can provide so much extra information and avoid silly errors in attribution.
All of these Tarantine diobols show Herakles fighting the Nemean Lion. It was the first labour of Herakles. Various versions of the motif exist on these coins but this one is particularly odd because of the owl perched on the lion's back. A cursory Google search fails to find an explanation and none is given by Evans, nor in a footnote in Vlasto. The metaphor, however, seems fairly clear to me.
The reverse design is copied from this gold coin of Syracuse and Dionysios I had loaned a Celtic detachment to the Spartans to fight against the Athenians. The owl, of course, is an icon of Athena and Athens. The obverse die of the gold coin is signed by Kimon but other varieties are signed by Euainetos and others. No signature exists for the reverse design. It is possible, as in many coin designs, that it was taken from a marble sculpture now lost. Taras had been founded by Spartan colonists and the date range of the two coins overlap. Unlike with date ranges given for modern coinage, ancient Greek date ranges only give an earliest and latest date based on various factors. It does not mean the coin in question was issued throughout that range and it is often the case that the coin was issued in a single year for a military campaign or as payment to a foreign state. The best example is the silver dekadrachm of Athens which was such a payment. They are never found at Athens, and all examples come from Turkey.
While I could illustrate another Taras diobol of the same reverse design, I have picked this coin of Herakleia. The city was founded by both Taras and Thourioi in 433 BC, and Celtic troops were used there by Pyrrhus against the Romans in 280 BC. It was this battle that gave us the term "Pyrrhic victory", meaning that the losses were so severe on both sides that perhaps "victory" is not the best term to use.
Gunestrup Cauldron plate, ca. 272-200 BC
On the Gundestrup cauldron plate to the left, a Thracian artist working in Italy has commemorated the battle by depicting a derivation of the Herakleia design of Herakles and the Nemean Lion to the left of the Celtic female who beats her chest in grief. To the right is a fallen warrior and the latter figure is also found on Armorican coins described as a "manikin" for some reason. The male central figures on the Gundestrup plates hold their arms upward in the orans position which, in this case signifies a victory as a sacrifice. Herakleia was considered a heroic loss which would have guaranteed advancement of the fallen warrior in his next life. The Celts believed in the transmigration of souls, and this belief might have originated during their service in the Mediterranean, or was syncretized between a similar belief of their own and the the same Pythagorean belief in Italy.
More influences can be seen in the pastiche of images to the right that I made many years ago. The top right is a detail from the Stara Zagora phalera which has been used to (incorrectly) associate the Gundestrup Cauldron with the Cimbri and the eastern Celtic tribe, the Scordiscsi. It demonstrates the foolishness of using findspots as absolute proof of origin and fails to understand that ancient artisans often moved around quite a bit.
Anders Berquist and Timothy Taylor said of the Gundestrup cauldron: "How Thracian silversmiths occupied themselves in the interval between the late 4th and late 2nd/early 1st centuries BC is unclear." That would be because the dating is wrong.
Flemming Kaul cites a phalera of the same style which was bought in Istanbul but is of uncertain origin as further evidence to this erroneous dating as it has an inscription to "King Mithridates" which he associates with Mithridates VI of Pontus who ruled at the time given to the cauldron. The name Mithridates in the ancient near east is as common as "John Smith" and the Mithridates in question is far more likely to be Mithridates II of Commagene who was restored by Augustus in 20 BC. (one of his "puppet" rulers). So much for the Cimbri/Scordisci connection. In fact, the Stara Zagora hoard also contained silver vessels of Augustan date and phalerae were very fashionable giftware during the time of Augustus.
Art-historical analysis, abandoned by most archaeologists as a consideration (making a virtue out of necessity) is essential when talking about ancient designs. It is very easy to see that the head of Herakles on the Stara Zagora phalera was copied from the denarius of M. Junius Brutus of 54 BC (top left). All that is different is that the head has been given a Herakles nose. The rest is a fairly close copy. This denarius circulated widely in Thrace. The artist of the phalera also combine the Syracusan Herakles design with another gold coin from Taras (bottom right) where Herakles is wielding a club, sadly, he placed the arm, upside down.
The Stara Zagora phalera is an example of what I am calling the Thracian Revival and I am sure that this was also originated by Augustus for another of his puppet rulers, Rhoemetalces I of Thrace. It is marked (on all examples) by background chasing of far more loose execution than is found on the earlier native Thracian styles which had gone out of fashion around the time of Lysimachos in favour of Italian and Sicilian Greek classical art, much of which reflects the work of Kimon and Euainetos. The Sark hoard of phalera (from the Channel Islands) is of the same period.
Neither nationalism nor time can constrain art and a culture of 300 BC is most often markedly different than a culture of 200 BC even in the same place. In my life, so far, I have experienced at least ten different cultures and most of them were in Calgary. No one "with an eye" would mistake the plaque on the left for anything other than Renaissance art, but it is done all the time. Repatriations of art objects mix psychological factors and nefarious political motives. I suppose that even this is yet another culture to add to the mix! It is already showing signs of become rather worn out, though, and undoubtedly will go the route of bell-bottom jeans or overly wide ties. The only photograph of my face on the web other than my photo-derived logo is this one of 1975 with the original fan-dancer, Sally Rand. In the article, I say that I look like a survivor from "That Seventies Show"
Now and again I identify finds for a British metal-detecting forum. These finds are almost always examples of early Celtic art because even Celtic coin finds are usually correctly identified by its metal detectorist members by the time I get there. Early Celtic art is understood by very few people at all. Imagine my surprise when I saw an example of the coin type on the right up for identification. As my first specialty about fifty years ago was ancient Greek coins, I knew what it was at once.
A metal detectorist usually finds quite a range of finds in any area with a long history, and a nice example of early Celtic art will almost never have anything even remotely connected with it nearby. Instead, there will be (typically) a fragment of a Medieval shoe buckle; a twentieth century penny; a watch key; a badly corroded late Roman coin... Not only that, but the twentieth century penny might well be at a greater depth than the Roman coin. Agricultural machinery acts like a giant food-processor! The most extreme case of that phenomenon I have seen was when I fourteen years old, and it was not on a ploughed field but actually at an archaeological site: I was walking with Malcolm Hay (my best friend at the time, and the one who got me interested in Greek coins) through the grounds of Prittlewell Priory in Essex when we saw an archaeological excavation underway that was very close to a modern building. We found this quite hilarious because, even at the age of fourteen, we were aware that putting in a foundation for a building disturbs quite a lot of ground around said building. This fact finally dawned on the excavators after they started finding beer bottle caps and a few other remains of the builder's lunches at Palaeolithic depths. This was also the first time that I started wondering about the observational abilities of some archaeologists. I am still wondering about that, more than fifty years later.
There was nothing that the finder of the Greek stater could connect with his find in that area and I told him of a couple of possibilities: the coin might have been a souvenir brought back from Italy by a Celtic warrior who had served In Pyrrhus' army. The closest tribe whom we know did serve at Taras was the continental Ambiani who were also the first of the Belgae to mint their own coins following the design of a gold stater of Taras (with the head of Amphitrite or Hera on the obverse), or the coin might have been lost by a collector who had just purchased it and was taking a short cut across the field on his way home (its paper envelope which was used before the modern plastic "flips", having long turned to pulp). Or could it have been something from a burglary which was thrown away as it was too identifiable? One could come up with any number of possibilities. Metal detecting might be an excellent pastime for the fiction writer looking for ideas for a new story!
Evidently, there was some sort of an alliance between Taras and Neapolis in Campania to explain this unusual type, but its details are uncertain. There are a few possibilities, though: one is described here, and this nineteenth century encyclopaedia might give other clues. Merely recounting what happened in the past, like entries in a ledger is a sterile activity, but cultures and their objects can inspire and culture is an ever-changing and ever-inspiring phenomenon that, by its very nature, has no boundaries (what would have Picasso's career have been like if he had seen no African masks brought back from French Africa?). Keats, certainly, was so inspired.
Come hither, leaving the island of Pelops, strong sons of Zeus and Leda; appear with kindly heart, Kastor and Polydeukes, who go on swift horses over the broad earth and all the sea, and easily rescue men from chilling death, leaping on the peaks of their well-benched ships, brilliant from afar as you run up the fore-stays, bringing light to the black ship in the night of trouble.
Alkaios of Mytilene, Fragment 34 (trans. Campbell, Vol. Greek Lyric I) early 6th century BC.
This episode contains just a few of the many references to the Dioscuri by Jung. These span eastern and western mythologies and religions. The source of all of these is the unconscious, but as impressions are received by the conscious, through dreams, altered psychological states and so forth, they can adopt cultural trappings. Our age, on the Mythos/Logos, scale is further to its Logos end than it has ever been in the history of humanity. Religion has lost much of its highly important metaphorical content and has become materialized. With that comes the insanity of religious wars (Joseph Campbell said "People are killing each other over their choices of metaphors.), and culture has been kidnapped by nationalism.
Rather than dwelling on such insanity, I want to focus more on the mortal and immortal as expressed in the core mythology of the Dioscuri.
"The year 531 is characterized astronomically by a conjunction of [Jupiter] and [Saturn] in Gemini. This sign stands for a pair of brothers, and they too have a somewhat antithetical nature. The Greeks interpreted them as the Dioscuri (‘boys of Zeus’), the sons of Leda who were begotten by the swan and hatched out of an egg. Pollux was immortal, but Castor shared the human lot. Another interpretation takes them as representing Apollo and Heracles or Apollo and Dionysus. Both interpretations suggest a certain polarity. Astronomically, at any rate, the air sign Gemini stands in a quartile and therefore unfavourable aspect to the conjunction that took place in the year 7 B.C. The inner polarity of may perhaps shed light on the prophecy about the war of the tanninim, which Rashi interprets as fishes. From the dating of Christ’s birth it would appear, as said, that the sun was in Gemini. The motif of the brothers is found very early in connection with Christ, for instance among the Jewish Christians and Ebionites."
Jung, C. G., Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 9 (Part 2): Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self (p. 81). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.
"Vollers compares Khidr and Elias on the one hand with Gilgamesh and his primitive brother Eabani or Enkidu, and on the other hand with the Dioscuri, one of whom was mortal and the other immortal. This relation applies equally to Jesus and John the Baptist, and Jesus and Peter. The last-named parallel can be explained only by comparison with the Mithraic mysteries, whose esoteric content is revealed to us in part by the surviving monuments."
Jung, C. G., Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 5: Symbols of Transformation: 005 (Kindle Locations 3985-3989). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.
"Another attempt at a solution seems to be the Dioscuri motif: two brothers who resemble one another, one mortal, the other immortal. This motif is found in Indian mythology as the two Asvins, though here they are not differentiated. It appears very clearly in Shvetashvatara Upanishad (4, 6) as the companion birds who “clasp the selfsame tree,” i.e., as the personal and suprapersonal atman. In the Mithraic cult, Mithras is the father, Sol the son, and yet both are one as δ μέγας θεòς Ἣλιος Μίθρας: “the great god Helios Mithras.” (Cf. Dieterich, p. 68.) That is to say, man does not change at death into his immortal part, but is mortal and immortal even in life, being both ego and self."
Jung, C. G., Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 5: Symbols of Transformation: 005 (Kindle Locations 18508-18513). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.
The Jungian mythologist Cark Kerényi, as the introduction to Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life presents an essay: Finite and Infinite Life in the Greek Language in which he discusses two Greek words for life: bios (βίος) and zoë (ζωή). The first is the individual life from conception to death, the second is life as its non-material substance. We might call it the life-force, but that modernism would be inaccurate as it exists apart from the material and thus cannot be expressed as energy. It does not, however, belong only to the mystical but should be a part of quantum physics. Wolfgang Pauli said that the Einsteinian "observer" should really be studied and defined as it is integral to physics, but it still remains at the periphery of quantum physics although it has certainly been brought closer with dual-aspect monism as explained by its most recent proponent, Harald Atmanspacher, and you can read this PDF of his Dual-Aspect Monism à la Pauli and Jung.
Mythological conflations can often be cultural "constellations" of archetypal imagery and on the coins of Taras, the imagery not just of the Dioscuri, but of Taras, himself and even his dolphin are brought into this same theme of the mortal and immortal as you can see in this excerpt from Murray Stein, Jungian Psychoanalysis: Working in the Spirit of C.G. Jung
Have a transformative weekend, and I will be back with more coins of Taras on Monday.
Whenever you see the word "ritual" in archaeological writing you can be fairly certain that the writer knows next to nothing about mythology and religion. In such passages, any details or references will usually be completely absent. Archaeologists who are critical of such usage are of the opinion that the writer just does not understand what has been observed and is using the word because nothing else makes sense.
Numismatic writing fares a little better, but most often only by defining a deity and its attributes. There is a common western misconception that mythology was a way for more primitive people than ourselves to understand the world (but now we have science). All of the above are merely projections of the psychology of the individual onto the material.
Jungian psychology and mythology are thoroughly integrated and mythology might better be seen as the original psychology. The materialism of modern times often finds historicity and material truth essential to its religious beliefs; treats the mind as the brain and seeks chemical reasons for its psychological problems and uses other chemicals for their cure. Again, we see only psychological projection in these views. We might wonder what Freud was projecting when he attributed so much to infantile sexual repression.
So far, in this series, I have mentioned some rather strange mythology. It is important to understand, though, that ancient people had different ways of expressing their ideas and, in the west, ancient ideas about religion were far more sophisticated than ideas about religion in modern times. The key to beginning to understand this is to understand a little about syncretism, and I am afraid that the Wikipedia article on such is not going to help you very much. Syncretisms are the ways in which new beliefs are accepted by people who retain much earlier beliefs. Using examples just from this series alone, I can give you some appreciation of what I like to call "the mythology code". The term "code" should sit well with people today as it appears often in popular culture. It should syncretize well!
Earlier and later deities in any area are often brought together through a stated family tie. The relationship might be parent and child or spousal. The newer deity could be father or son; mother or daughter, or even a more distant relative depending on what the culture thought had more authority. If the newer belief wanted to make a complete break with the older (in a society that had religious familial importances) then the castration or the killing of the relative was the way to establish this break. Joseph Campbell gives a good example with the story of Cain and Abel (the new herders replacing the earlier agriculturists).
The subject of the Dioscuri reveals much about modern, materialist, belief as it is expressed in the modern, and completely muddled concept: Interpetatio Romana, which references Tacitus, Germania chapter 43, but rarely gives the actually quote:
"The Naharvali proudly point out a grove associated with with an ancient worship. The presiding priest dresses like a woman; but the deities are said to be the counterpart of our Castor and Pollux. This indicates their character, but their name is the Alci. There are no images, and nothing to suggest that the cult is of foreign origin; but they are certainly worshipped as young men and as brothers."
After you have read my introduction to the "mythology code", you will probably realize that Tacitus had far more knowledge about mythology and syncretism than those who created and use the term "Inerpretatio Romana". The phrase is modern and does not exist anywhere in classical literature. Some people have even imagined the phrase to have indicated a Roman policy! In Gaul, Roman names that are attached to indigenous deities were not even so attached by Romans. They were attached by the indigenous priesthood because of Augustus' prioritizing of the Roman deities: At the top of his list was Vesta, who was considered to be the most Roman of all, then came deities that were major, but who had obviously been syncretized such as Apollo (who retained his name from the Greek), Mars (Ares), who was obviously important to the Roman Army, and so on. Augustus, also initiated a cult of the emperor. Not because he imagined himself a god, but because previously, Roman soldiers swore an allegiance to their generals, and that would not have been a politically smart move for the new empire. I believe that Augustus was one of the most intelligent leaders in world history. The Gaulish priests, in the new empire could expect more perks if their temple was dedicated to a Romanized god than the indigenous one, and the higher up the list, the better (Vesta, however, was "off limits" of course). In the Roman Empire, foreign cults got little official financial support. The Gaulish priest would be given a large amount of land, some of which was to be leased to farmers in order to supplement the temple's income as was Augustus' policy. For archaeology, If there is no Roman temple then any Roman hoard cannot, possibly, be a religious offering (see my series on the Frome hoard).
I had intended to go straight into Jung's ideas about the Diocuri in this episode but realized, this morning, that without such an introduction as I have given here, it would make no sense to anyone at all who is not either a mythologist or a Jungian. Mythology is a phenomenally complex subject, but the rest of its complexity you will start to pick up as we go along. Tomorrow, however, we will examine the Jungian viewpoint of the Dioscuri and their syncretisms without further ado.
[Admin. note: if anyone emailed my personal email yesterday (not the GMail listed on the blog), please resend as a Verizon pipe in Seattle to my ISP went down and some emails were lost. It did give me a chance to chat with William who is adding new features to the Celtic Coin Index Online, but these are still in development and not public yet.]
There are only two ancient objects which depict both a man riding a dolphin and an elephant. One of them (which does have other varieties, however) is this stater of Taras, and the other is the Gundestrup cauldron. That the connection is not made in all published papers on the Gundestrup cauldron almost boggles the mind. The reason, I believe, is due to the lack of interdisciplinary (antiquarian) approaches, mainly with archaeology. Slowly, the situation is starting to improve with the postmodern influence on the subject but many of the people who are publishing today were trained in the modernist manner of New Archaeology which reached its apex back in the seventies and cultural lag usually takes quite a few decades to pass. So far, it has reached the "fashionable" stage where postmodernism is presented in archaeology more as a showcase and not simply as a useful tool for understanding. It is limited, too, by another (purely academic) fad for really bad writing and composition as is satirized by the pomo-generator.
When Pyrrhus came to Italy on the invitation of Taras, he brought with him a number of war elephants and the symbol on the stater illustrated here refers to that event, as was noted by Evans in the nineteenth century and is still accepted as fact. My favourite account of Pyrrhus in Italy is in Plutarch's life of Pyrrhus and you can read Bill Thayer's presentation of the Loeb edition. By the way, The complete Loeb Classics are currently available to individuals by subscription, but sadly, not yet by purchase. Hopefully, Harvard, Amazon or Google Play will one day rectify that situation.
Pyrrhus also used Celtic armies in Italy and this is why the Gundestrup cauldron uses so much imagery from his Italian campaigns (not just Taras). The cauldron, itself was made in Italy by Thracian artisans. The native schools of Thracian art had become unpopular and were being replaced by Greek artists from Italy and Sicily who brought their styles and influences with them. I believe that the cauldron was made for Celtic patrons in northern Italy, but the British Witham shield has some designs typical of southern Italian workshops (Jope, 2,000).
All that remains is to show you the Gundestrup plate with the elephants and its female Celtic figure with her arms in the gesture of grief (presumably for the many lives lost by Pyrrhus in his "Pyrrhic Victory"). Obviously, the elephants were drawn from a description of the animal, unlike the more realistic symbol on the stater.
The most famous coins of Taras are the horsemen staters and nothing I could say about them could compete with Arthur J. Evans' The Horsemen of Tarentum, published as a book in 1889. Happily, you can download the entire work with its plates, for free, from Goggle Play Books. Although written over a hundred years ago, the information has changed less than you might imagine.
This episode is mainly a "picture book" of a few of the coins that I think expresses the series best. I will, however focus on specific types in following episodes. All of the coins here are coins from Classical Numismatics Group Inc. and will have only the date range but the links will take you to the full descriptions. Similar coins can be purchased at any time without having to spend a fortune as many of them are quite common and they are very popular among collectors and dealers
The first coin is very difficult to find, but I include it because it is the first illustrated in Evans work and no example of it existed in Vlasto's collection: one of the few varieties he could never find The photo below is the reverse of the same type in the Altes Museum, Berlin, and is the only additional example I could find on the web.
The reverse of Evans 1 Altes Museum, Berlin. Adapted from a photo by Sailko
I particularly like "the profusion of waves" as David R. Sear puts it in his listing in Greek Coins and their Values, Seaby, Volume 1, 1978, 321. Back in 1965-6 you could find me, most lunchtimes in his department at Seaby's in Great Portland Street, London when I was 15-16 years old, as I worked not far away. David was a mentor to many kids at that time, and of course, ancient coins were a lot less expensive than they are today! I still have many great memories of David at that time and (of course) his really beautiful assistant Helen Webster!
The horsemen of Taras can be anything from young boy jockeys at the equestrian games in that city to the Dioscuri and to armed warriors and the types often reflected the state of their society at any given time. They also have a wide range of attendant symbols and magistrate's names.
For the rest of this post, just enjoy the coin images and I will be back tomorrow, in this series, with elephants.
from the Vlasto collection, but not illustrated in op. cit. (part one). Obverse: Taras astride dolphin, arms outstretched, scallop shell below. Reverse: Head of a Nereid within circle.
This episode focuses on misunderstandings and mythological conflations. The head on the reverse is often described as Satyra (Satyræa). However, this is not a name and means only "the daughter of a satyr". In other words, a nymph. However (again), the sea-nymphs (Nereids) are all related to Poseidon, and one of these was the mother of Taras.
"They say that Taras the hero was a son of Poseidon by a nymph of the country, and that after this hero were named both the city and the river. For the river, just like the city, is called Taras."
"There is a tradition that Taras was born to Neptune by Satyræa, daughter of Minos."
There is only one of the Nereids attributed by name on a coin of Taras, and that appears on a gold coin of the late 4th century BC, and the name is given as Amphitrite (although Vlasto said it is Hera). Amphitrite really only means the goddess or queen of the sea, so you can see how both Amphitrite and Hera could have been used. I can find no other classical reference to clarify the matter so I am leaving her identity simply as a Nereid. It might well be true that Amphitrite was adopted, by name, by the people of Taras to have been the mother of Taras, and less likely that Amphitrite and Aphrodite were conflated at Taras (both were loved by Poseidon and there was a very important cult of Aphrodite at Taras as is indicated by the common scallop shell symbol on the coins).
The explanation for the circle around the head of the Nereid is illustrated by this passage in The Argonautika by Apollonius of Rhodes, Book IV, line 936:
"And as when in fair weather herds of dolphins come up from the depths and sport in circles round a ship as it speeds along, now seen in front, now behind, now again at the side and delight comes to the sailors; so the Nereids darted upward and circled in their ranks round the ship Argo, while Thetis guided its course."
While the dolphins circling the ship might well have delighted the sailors, I once was fishing off the coast of British Columbia when a number of porpoises circled our boat. They were hoping to steal any fish we were hooking at about 400 feet down. We had some pebbles in the boat, according to a local custom, to throw at the porpoises to try to get them to leave, but I really doubt that any porpoise was ever hit by one except by pure chance as they did not stay above the waves long enough for me to even aim my camera at any of them. Dogfish, too, were present hoping for a free meal. Never saw any Nereids, though.
Obverse: Taras as founder of the city (Oikist) seated holding distaff and kantharos. Reverse: Taras astride dolphin, arms outstretched, scallop shell beneath. photo: Classical Numismatic Group Inc.
The second coin is another from the Vlasto collection and is illustrated in the book ibid. When Pausanius, in the above passage called Taras a hero, it was the Oikist cult to which he was referring. I could have used a better condition coin of the type, but this variety is not just from the Vlasto collection but only three are known to exist.
