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Author Topic: What's Propylaeus?  (Read 3147 times)

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Offline Ed Flinn

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What's Propylaeus?
« on: October 14, 2004, 09:09:46 pm »

AE33, Cremna in Pisidia, Valerian, SNG von Aulock 8607

IMP CAES P LICINI VALERIANO P F, Laureate draped cuirassed bust right / APOLLINI P_ROPVL COL CREM, Apollo Propylaeus advancing right with bow and arrow.

But I don't know what Propylaeus is.  Google's not a bit helpful, though there are references to a statue of Hermes Propylaeus by Alcamenes.

Offline slokind

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Re:What's Propylaeus?
« Reply #1 on: October 14, 2004, 09:46:30 pm »
First, let me say what an enviable coin you have, both for the portrait and for the iconography of the reverse.
Propylaeus (propylaios) means 'of or at the gateway'.  Bravo for Google getting the famous one, the herm (copy in Istambul Museum) by Alkamenes, the pupil of Pheidias, of Hermes Propylaios which stood in Athens itself, presumably in the Propylaia to the Acropolis.
But here we have an Anatolian Apollo as a city guardian, and that is wonderful.  Maybe the Apollo Archer reverses at cities in Thrace are guardian rather than hunter figures of Apollo, too?  I guess that's a flying cape, very much stylized?
Head, HN, p. 707, mentions this type for Apollo at Cremna, and says nothing limiting it to Valerian.  I bet the BMC has it.  I don't usually recommend anyone's wallowing around in A B Cook's Zeus (multi-volumed), which does go off on what seem to be tangents, in spite of formidable learning, but I bet you could find something somewhere in it.
Pat Lawrence

Offline Ed Flinn

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Re:What's Propylaeus?
« Reply #2 on: October 14, 2004, 10:12:56 pm »
Thanks for the translation, and for the pointer.  Yes, I'm sure that's a cloak flying.

A Google search for "Apollo Propylaeus" does turn up a few sellers with similar reverses for other emperors.

 

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