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Coins of mythological interest

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Jochen:
Ma-Enyo - the archaic War Goddess

I never had heard of Ma-Enyo before. That's the reason for this coin. I wanted to go into that matter. You see the Greek mythology is 'a bottomless pit'. It doesn't run out by the well-known twelve Olympic gods which I could show in this thread as I hope.

Septimius Severus AD 193-211
AE 29, struck in the year 172 of Komana Pontica = AD 205/6
obv AY KL CEP CEOYHROC
       bust , draped and cuirassed, laureate, r.
rev. IEROKAICA KOMANE
       tetrastyle temple, with trigonal pediment, in the temple statue of Ma-Enyo on pedestal,  standing facing, head r., holding wreath in raised l. hand
       ET BOP in ex.
BMC 3; Sear GIC 2156
F+

This is a coin of Komana Pontica, as distinct from the Cappadocian Komana, by which it was founded. It was laying at the river Iris and was named Hierocaesarea by the Romans.

1. Mythology:
Enyo was one of the three Graiai, the Gray Sisters, daughters of Phorkys and his wife Keto. They were born already with white-grey hair. They were called Phorcyades like their sisters, the Moires, which were grey, old goddesses too. Hesiod knew only two of them: Pemphredo with the beautiful garment, and Enyo with the saffron garment. He pointed out their lovely faces. Enyo is a warlike name, she was the destroyer of cities. Pemphredo is meaning the wasp. Later Deino, the dreadful, was added. It is said they have had tgether only one eye and only one tooth. Where they lived no sun and no moon was shining. It would be the cave at the entrance to the land of the Gorgones and it closely was guarded by them. But Perseus could outsmart them: He stole them their sole eye and so forced them to give away the way to the Gorgo Medusa which he wants to kill.
 
2. Background:
Ma, originally, was an appelative babble word for the pre-hellenic Earth and Mother Goddess, used already in the Mycenic religion. In Asia Minor Ma namely is known from Phrygia, Lydia and Caria. In the Cappadokian and the Pontic Komana she had an independent cult with criteria of a city goddess and mistress of the hetaires. She has had a temple state with six thousand(!) hierodules (= temple slaves). In spite of superimposing her old-anatolic habitus in many cases, exchanging with figures like Kybele, Hipta and Artemis Anaitis and evolving of exstatic rites Ma saved her genuine martialic features. In the form of Enyo she represented an opposite pole to the double Ares-Enyalios. Since Sulla and Catilina she was warshipped by the Romans due to her victory bringing power and equated with Bellona. Therefore the Amazones from Asia minor were regarded as battlesome death daemons of the Pontic-Anatolic Ma-Artemis-Anaitis.

Ares himself always was the ferocious war god, who was known for killing only for the sake of killing. The Greek in fact despised him which is seen clearly by Homer. But this is another story...

Sources:
Der kleine Pauly 
Kerenyi, Griechische Göttersagen

Best regards

Jochen:
Ares - the bloodthirsty killer

In my contribution to Ma-Enyo there already was an advice on Ares. Therefore this new contribution is attached meaningful to the first. I think it is important to remind that Ares nothing have to deal with Mars. Generally the popular identification of Greek gods with Roman gods (f.e. Aphrodite = Venus, and so on) is mythological and cultural-historical not correct at all!

As example I have chosen an AE26 of Macrinus from Nikopolis ad Istrum. Sure there are more beautiful pics of Ares on the reverses of Greek coins. But my collction subject are Roman coins. So I hope for understanding.

Moesia inferior, Nikopolis ad Istrum, Macrinus AD 217-218
AE 26, struck under the legate Statius Longinus
obv. AYT K OPELL - CEY MAKREINOC
        bust, cuirassed, laureate, r.
rev. YP CTA LONGINOY NIKOPOLITWN PROC / ICTRON
       Ares, with Korinthian helmet, standing l., resting l. hand on shield set on ground,
       holding inverted spear in r.
Pick 446; SNG München 440; Moushmov 1219

Ares was the Greek war god, the embodiment of bloody slaughter killing and furious battle turmoil. His name has got various different interpretations due to wild-elementary character of his acting: The 'shouter', the 'impetuous'. More convincing Kretschmer puts him to Greek 'are, aros', the 'damager', the 'punisher, the 'avenger'. With that resulted an appelative description of a personally at first indefinite daemonic damaging power. As evidence count the formulas of oath gods in the synoikism treaty between Erchomens and Euaimon, where Ares respectively Areia is used as regular appelative of Zeus, Athena and Enyalios. The etymology of Kretschmer Nilsson takes for his thesis, Ares actually would be only the personification of the murderous fight. Approved is his thesis because Ares by Homer should be synonymic to 'slaughter, killing' and  occurs together with personificated ideas like Eris, Deimos and Phobos.

But it should mentioned that the Homeric Ares absolutely bears characteristics like a living person: Wounded by Diomedes he cries like 10000 men; fallen he covers an area of 7 plethres and while he was rolling in the dust his weapons clanked around him. He is stormy, the fastest of the gods and insatiable in fight. To this sharp picture as a person apply the Knossos plates which know of a god Ares (A-re).

On the other side the antipathy of the Homeric poet against Ares is unmistakable: He calls him frantic, pernicious and double-minded, lawless and perfidious, the man slaughter, who like no other god debased himself to kill the mortals by his own hands. In the burlesque episode with Aphrodite in the net of Hephaistos and as captive of the Aloades in the iron cauldron he doesn't make a good figure, and in the battle scenes of the Iliade he was assigned always to abhorrent and inglorious roles. In these constant defeats of the raging berserk against the always with superior intellect acting Athena the aversion is mirrored which the Greek had against the senseless war fury of barbaric-crude foreign people.

The odium of the daemonic-weird foreign god is adherent on Ares as son of Zeus and Hera and member of the Olympic family too. His origin from the barbaric Thracia is proofed; that even was named after him Areia, and so Detschew has supposed a derivation of his name from the Thracian language. Furthermore the Karic slaughter daemon Enyeus-Enyalios, the companion of the warlike Potnia Ma-Enyo and traceable already for Mycenic times, is melted with him in the Iliade and can be used synonymously. The Ares-Enyalios represents thus well the fusion of a Bronze Age mediterranean lance god with a war daemon of the Thracian influenced Mycenic chariot culture in the 17th/16th century BD. The original connection with a superposed battlesome female deity (Enyo) was transferred in Ares partially into the son relation to the battlesome Hera, partially into the weapon, love and cultural community of the Minor Asian Aphrodite.

referring to 'Der kleine Pauly'

Best regards 

Jochen:
Aphrodite Pudica

Here I want to share a coin which I bought because its reverse. It is an AE23 of Gordian III from Deultum in Thracia.

Gordian III AD 238-244
AE 23, 6.42g
obv. IMP GORDIANVS PIVS FEL AVG
       bust, draped and cuirassed, laureate, r.
rev. COL FL PAC / DEVLT
       Cult statue of Aphrodite with vase standing in Porticus of tetrastyle temple, seen
       in perspektive, with two-stepped Pedement, trigonal Pediment decorated with
       globe, and Akroteria decorated with crosses.
Jurukova 261 (4 Spec.: Sofia, Plovdiv, Burgas, Berlin); Moushmov 3735
rare, VF, nice blue-green patina

Deultum as founded by veterans of Vespasian's VIII. Legion Augusta before AD 77 under the name COLONIA FLAVIA PACIS DEULTUM.

Cultural history:
Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of  beauty and love. She is much older and more original than the Roman Venus. Venus was a more local goddess and came to Rome not before the 4th century BC. Aphrodite in contrast is a goddess of indoeuropean-hellenic, aegean-anatolic and semitic-orientalic elements. The origin of her name is unknown, perhaps related to the semitic *asthart. Her relation to Cypre would well apply to this origin. Some scholars assume, that the name of the month April is coming from the Etruscan *aprodita. That would aprove an Etruscan mediator role. She seems to be a conglomerate of old fertility goddesses. Her attributes dolphin and shell point to a marine, dove, sparrow and swane to a celestial, and apple, rose and pomegranate to a vegetable sexual sphere. Not until Homer Aphrodite was removed from this dark, sinister deity and changed to the bright goddess of charm and grace. She was called 'philommeides', the smiling, and she was the mistress of the Grace.

Art history:
On the reverse we see in the midth of the temple the statue of Aphrodite Pudica in the attitude of the Capitolinean Venus, with a vase right on ground. Her attitude today is hold for shame (therefore 'Pudica'), but in ancient times it was rather meant indicative.
 
Her support (here the vase) varies from depiction to depiction, is changing from r. to l., but the attitude of Aphrodite is always the same. This is the Venus which Giovanni Pisano cites on the pulpit in the Cathedral of Pisa (however for Prudentia) and then naturally the paradigm that was used by Botticelli for his most famous painting 'The birth of Venus' (and not the Venus Medici!). It was the favourite type of the Roman Empire! Sadly we don't know who has created it, and not even when it was created (anytime between the 4th and the 1st century BC). This statue was so wide spread over the Empire that it is impossible to say which copy Pisano or Botticelli have seen.

The same reverse type is known for Julia Domna and Plautilla from Nikopolis too. The Knidean and the Medicean Venus are much rarer on coins. But it should be mentioned that the Aphrodite type called Genetrix and seen on coins of Sabina and charakterized by uncovering herself (perhaps for Ares or Adonis) and offering an apple, existed in many copies too and was an as popular type as that we call Capitolinean.

As an addition a pic of the Capitolinean Venus

Thanks to Pat Lawrence!   

Best regards

Jochen:
The infant Dionysos

Dionysos is a very complexe mythological figure. Therefore I will split him into more than one contribution. Here the first: Dionysos as infant.

Thracia, Pautalia, Marcus Aurelius AD 161180
AE 18
obv. AYT KAI M AYR ANTWNINOC
        bust, draped (and Cuirassed?), bare-headed, r.
rev. PAYT - ALIW - TWN
       Dionysos as infant sitting in a winnowing fan, r., seen half from behind, stretching
       hands, Thyrsos behind
Ruzicka 60a

Until now I never had heard of a winnowing fan. Here the information I have found: A winnowing fan is a wooden or (in ancient times) plaited bowl used to separate the wheat from the chaff. By using the winnowing fan to toss the grain in the air the chaff was blown away by the wind. In Latin it is called 'vannus', as 'vannus mystica' in the Eleusinic Mysteries, in Greek it is 'liknon', that's why this depiction is called 'Dionysos Liknites' too. In the Demeter cult it was a basket with the first fruits, which played a big role in the Eleusinic Mysteries (Apuleius Met. 11). See the added pic from Pompeji too!

The Thyrsos on the rev. looks more like a Narthex birch from the Ferula communis used to cane scholars by schoolmasters. The inside is pithy and used like tinder to make fire. It is said that Prometheus has used Narthex to bring the fire to men. The Thyrsos is made from a Narthex birch.

Mythology:

The first Dionysos:
Following the Orphic stories Dionysos was the son of Zeus and Persephone. Hera has instigated Titans from the Underworld to kill the young boy. Two of them with white coloured faces hijacked him, cut him into seven pieces and cooked him in a cauldron. When they began to roast the pieces on spits Zeus smelled the flavour of the roast appeared and drove the Titans back into the Underworld where they belong. The cooked members were burnt to ashes, from which the grape-vine arose, except one which Zeus took for himself. It is said that this was the heart. But this is a word-play as I will show. It is said that Zeus has given the 'Dionysos Kradaios' to the goddess Hipte for maintenance. Hipte was a goddess of Asia Minor like Rhea. "Kradaios is ambiguous, it can be derived from kradia 'heart' but from krade 'figtree' too and then meaning an artifact made of figwood.. The basket which the priestresses of Demeter are carrying on their heads was a 'liknonon', a winnowing  fan, in which - being carried in the ceremonial procession - usually a phallos was lying under the fruits; an artifact which Dionysos has made from figwood." (Kerenyi, p.201) The liknites ('who is lying in the winnowing fan') was consistlenty 'revived' by the female attendants of Dionysos. (ibid.)

The second Dionysos:
Beside the son of Persephone there was a second Dionysos, the son of Semele and Kadmos. Actually he was the son f Zeus too, who was fallen in love with Semele. When Semele prayed Zeus to come to her in the same shape as to Hera he came as lightning and Semele was killed instantly. Zeus saved the unborn child from the belly of Semele and included him in his own thigh. At the mountain Nysa Dionysos was born a second time by Zeus and he gave the infant to divine nurses (or Hermes) to care for him.

If you are engaged with Dionysos you can recognize many parallels to Christianity. We find the central motive of death and subsequent resurrection. We see an infant with the mission to save the world as the Orphics belief, and we have the cradle of the child Jesus!

To round it up here a pic from a frieze from the Villa of mysteries in Pompeji AD 50: Scenes from the sanctification during the Dionysian Ceremonies. A wife is lifting the veiling drapery from a plaited basket, a winnowing fan. In the basket as symbol of fertility an erected veiled phallos.A female daemon beside with open wings is striking out with a long whip.

Best regards

Jochen:
Dionysos and the panther

The panther plays an important role in the mythology of Dionysos. Dionysos always also was a god of the wilderness. It is an integrative part of his cult to disrupt bloodily animal or human victims in bits. He too was disrupted (or cut) as Dionseus Zagreus in bits by the Titans too. This wild orgiastic nature was expressed by the wild animals which were his attendants. It is said that Dionysos most af all has loved the panther because the panther was as excitable as he was and would make the same leaps like the Maenads.

All wild animals are connected to Dionysos, but none more so than the lion or panther. The supple, feline elegance of its body, the ferocious and easily provoked temper, the boundless appetite, and uncanny intelligence of the creature make it uniquely and inevitably linked to the Dionysiac sphere - and indeed, the wild cat is frequently depicted in the company of the wild God. Like the Magna Mater, Dionysos' cart was drawn by lions and panthers. The cats freely accompanied him at other times, sitting tamely at his feet like puppies, or dancing enraptured with the rest of creation during the Bacchic revel.

When Dionysos sought to punish someone - for instance Lycurgos - the wild cat was often the agent of the God's awful chastisement.

Source: http://www.winterscapes.com/sannion/dionysos_symbols.htm

AE 28 of Gordian III from Hadrianopolis in Thracia
obv. AYT KM ANT GORDIANOC AV
        bust, draped, laureate, r.
rev.  ADP - IA - NO / POLEITWN
       Dionysos, nude, with Thyrsos, lying backwards on panther, riding r.
Mionnet 778; Lindgren III, A65A; Jurokova 482; Moushmov 2707. No.3071
SS, some spots to recognize on the panther's skin

As addition a pic of the famous mosaic from Pella in Macedonia showing the same scene.

Best regards

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