Help please for Apollo Musagetes from Mesembria

[Jochen]

Hi!

Here I have a new coin with no references found:

Philip II & Serapis
AE 27, 10.73g
obv. MAR IOVLIOC FILIPPOC / KAICA / R
        Confronted busts of Philip II, r., and Serapis, l.
rev. MEC - AMB - RIANWN (MB and WN ligate)
       Apollo Musagetes, in long clothes, stg. l., resting l. hand on lyra set on high column,
       holding plektron in out stretched r. hand.

The same rev. is known for Caracalla (BMC 13), Philip I & Otacilia and Gordian III & Tranquillina (SNG Cop. 663)

Any information highly appreciated! Thanks in advance!

Best regards

[slokind]

That's a beauty.  A question occurred immediately, though.  Every Mousagetes is a Kitharaoidos, because that's how he leads Muses, but there are many more Apollo Kitharoidos types with no hint of Muses behind or around him, so is it proper to call him Mousagetes in the case of a type that just shows Apollo with the kithara resting on a column?  The presence of the decorative column does suggest that the coin type merely refers to a temple image of Apollo Kitharoidos.  Pliny and Pausanias mention such without alluding to Muses.  Of course, the Mousagetes is that aspect of Apollo that is, literally, musical.
So I'm not objecting, only asking whether we can think that a person looking at the coin in antiquity would say 'Mousagetes'.
Pat L.

[Jochen]

Pat, you are right! I often have asked me for the difference between Kitharoedes and Mousagetes and I have found these two are often mixed up. So I have never found a coin with the real Mousagetes. Do you?

Another problem which has occured is the plektron. The depicted plektra always are oval things often with a hole. But here and on other coins too it is a longish object which seems to have a spherical part on both ends. Any informations about that?

Best regards     

[slokind]

It didn't occur to me that what Apollo holds on the coin of Mesembria is his plektron.  Of course, it could be.  Somewhere in Asia Minor there surely is an Apollo with a muse or two on a coin?  Somewhat to my surprise, I don't find that epithet in Head HN Index, nor even Muses.  I know where to go in sculpture: the Thasos reliefs in the Louvre and the Mantineia statue base in Praxitelean style in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.  I'm sure there are paintings--but we want coins.  I'll keep it in mind.
The difference between the two terms is basically that one denotes an activity, singing as he plays the kithara, and the other denotes a relationship in Greek thought about him, that Apollo is Leader of the Muses.
Pat
Archaic art is so vivid.  Going to the Wedding of Peleus and Thetis on Sophilos's dinos in the British Museum, here, all labeled (though Sophilos did not spell nearly so well as Kleitias), are Hermes and Apollo, singing (mouth open) and playing his kithara, the two riding in a chariot whose horses are accompanied by the Muses: MOSAI is not a misspelling, since the 'false diphthong, ou, was written simply with omicron about 570 or early 560s BCE when this was done.
Notice that Hermes wears his petasos, and that Apollo, as a professional musician would, wears the long linen gown of a kitharoidos.

[Jochen]

The object in Apollo's r. hand is sometimes called plektron, sometimes laurel wreath or branch. I have another coin with the same depiction struck for Caracalla (BMC 13). Here it is clearly no branch and no wreath. So the plektron is the only alternative, or is there another possibility except 'unknown object' (I hate that!)?

Best regards

[wandigeaux (1940 - 2010)]

I have a coin of Phillip II from Mesembria of the same type (different dies), but with just such an object in Apollo's hand. I cannot see how it can be a plektron (it is huge in proportion to the lyre), nor a laurel branch or wreath.  It looks like some kind of root vegetable, perhaps an onion (really, to a Californian, like a sugar beet!), and it is obviously intended to look like it does.  I do not think it is an onion, and until somebody can come up with other examples from Mesembria (where it seems to be a frequent type) or elsewhere, or can show some mythological connection between Apollo and onions, I think, for now, that it is an unknown object.  Cheers, George Spradling

[slokind]

Recalling that Dionysos has a role to play at Eleusis, I thought (but did not want to recall the discussion of opium or other poppy as regards the species) that poppy heads were as likely as anything else--likelier than onions (I wonder whether the ancient Greeks had bred such bulbous ones as we grow).  I also notice that good old Sophilos, whose lettering is so clumsy and whose picture is so small, seems to have provided the Apollo on the dinos (posted just above) with a perfectly plain plektron--it would make a good guitar pick, in fact--between his right thumb and forefinger, held just right.  Pat L.

[dpaul7]

Hi all!

My first thought when I looked at the object being held was some type of plant.

I think you've got it... It does indeed look like a Poppy. The poppy is used as a control mark with the head of Apollo on one coin I researched.  (see link below). 

This piqued my interest, and I did find some information!

From The Poppy, Opium and Its Use in Late Minoan III - Remarks on the Discovery of the Minoan Poppy Goddess Idol
by P.G. Kritikos

The poppy plant and its sleep-inducing qualities were already known in antiquity. It was viewed as a magical or poisonous plant. The ancient Greeks portrayed Hypnos, the god of sleep, Nyx (night) and Thanatos (death) wreathed with poppies or carrying poppies in their hands.  Similarly, they also decorated statues of Apollo, Demeter, Aphrodite, Cybele and other gods, which either wear poppy wreaths on their heads or carry poppy bouquets with or without stalks of wheat in their hands. The fruit of the poppy with or without stalks of wheat can also be found in pictures, reliefs, vessels, coins and jewelry.

This also:  (link is http://www.unodc.org/unodc/bulletin/bulletin_1967-01-01_4_page003.html

From The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

The history of the poppy and of opium and their expansion in antiquity in the eastern Mediterranean area
IV. THE POPPY AS AN EMBLEM ON COINS
The poppy, both in plant and in capsule form, appears on various coins of the Greek and Roman period.
We append illustrations of a few coins which testify to the use of the poppy as a symbol of various divinities [ 142] (Fig. 30).

The original of this article is in Greek.

Part I of this article was published in the preceding number of the Bulletin (Vol. XIX, No. 3)
Thus, on a coin of Ankyra Phrygia [ 143] (2nd century A.D.) the poppy-head is shown with two cornears (Fig. 30b); on the reverse of another coin from Ephesus [ 144] (79-81 A.D.), Concord is shown holding two wheat-ears and a poppy in her right hand and a cornucopia in her left (Fig. 30d).

On a Metapontian coin [ 145] the poppy is also shown with a wheat-ear (Fig. 30a).
30. Coins depicting the poppy capsule
On the reverse of a Roman coin [ 146] (81-96 A.D.)-on the observe of which is a profile of the wife of the Emperor Domitian represented as Demeter crowned with ears of wheat-three poppy-heads appear in a bunch of wheat-ears (Fig. 30c).
On another coin bearing the head of Athena we find a poppy-head as a complementary symbol; [ 147] (Fig. 30e).
In the hands of Apollo, Asklepios [ 165] and the gods of medicine, the poppy-capsules are clearly symbolic of the curative qualities of the plant, seeing that these gods were the special protectors of medicine.

-------
All in all - a very interesting piece, and I got to learn something new!

dpaul7

[wandigeaux (1940 - 2010)]

Wikipedia, under "cithara," reproduces a fragment of a vase painting showing what must be a plectrum; it consists of two oval parts extending on either side of the hand, and looks just like the representation on the coin of Caracalla above.  This information hides under the link to "Classic Encyclopedia article" at the bottom of the page.  So much, seemingly, for vegetable matter.  George Spradling

[featherz]

Here is a 'plectrum' from pomponius musa for comparison.



based on that, I can see the resemblance in the OP's coin although that item is a bit 'floppier'.

[Jochen]

Nice to see! Thanks, Tia! I think it looks very similar to the object in Apollo's hand on the rev. of the coin for Philip II & Serapis.

Best regards

[slokind]

Featherz' Pomponius Musa pretty conclusively shows that a kithara player can hold something much larger than those on Attic vases.  That's a beauty, too.  Pat L.

[Jochen]

Here is the vase painting Wandigeaux has provided. The plektron seems to have a plate (the actual plektron) on one side and a loop on the other side of the hand from which hangs the string by which the plektron often was fixed to the kithara.

The 2nd pic is a part of a vase painting. Sorry, I have to magnify the small pic for making the details visible. Here too you can see two parts of the plektron, like on the above pic. May be that one of them is the loop for the fixing string?

Best regards 

[slokind]

Jochen: I ransacked everything I had yesterday for the New York Citharoedus; unfortunately, I seem not to have scanned the slide that I gave to LSU.  Of course, I could go and borrow it.  But only Mon.-Fri.  I was going to go the the Journal of Hellenic Studies for 1922 where Sir John Davidson Beazley first published his magisterial tracing (even better than Karl Reichold drawings, and the latter didn't do this one), when I remembered Donna Kurtz's excellent publication of the drawings in the Beazley Archive at the Ashmolean Museum.  That I have.  The entry includes part of Bealey's description of this wonderful drawing: "In his right hand the musician holds the plectrum, which is decorated with a tassel, and fastened to the cithara by a cord."
So I have scanned the tracing.  It is too bad that New York is so stingy with study images, but I assure you that Beazley was as painstaking as he was subtle as a draftsman.  The blackest lines lines are relief glaze-paint; the palest ones are dilute (so pale brown) glaze-paint.  This is early Berlin Painter, probably from the first decade of the 5th c BCE.
I can hardly believe that I don't have a full-page color photo of this vase in the house.
Pat L.
NO ONE SHOULD TAKE THE DRAWING FOR A "SKETCH"!  IT IS A MASTER TRACING, BY A GREAT CONNOISSEUR, OFF THE VASE ITSELF.  A photo would have some distortion, from surface curvature and from the lens used.  The tracing does not.

[Jochen]

Thanks, Pat, for the sketch! I think it shows the painting of the vase of which I have shown a part above.

Browsing through CoinArchives I have found some more plektra:
(1) The plektron looks like a long stick.
(2) The plektron looks like a T (above the lyrae)
(3) The plektron looks like a L (behind the bust)
(4) A plektron like a short stick.

I think there must be several different designed plektra in ancient music!

Best regards

[slokind]

Here is the Berlin Amphora (namepiece itself).  Though it shows the use of relief lines and the purplish-red paint for the cord and the tassel and allows for maximum detail, the vase being 81.5cm tall with its lid (Heilmeyer 1988, p. 125), the sheen of the glaze paint and the play of light prevent a photo being as informative as a good drawing.  The faun is painted with dilute glaze-paint.
Also, notice that the satyr plays a lyre, not a cithara, though it looks AS IF we may assume that the same plektron was used for both.  On the back of the vase, another satyr, alone, also plays a lyre.
Pat L.