Big and intricate hand-hammered coins were designed to impress with their workmanship, which they clearly
still do, bringing out best and worst in modern cataloguers. Here are three or four cases in point, coins involving
Athena and the smith-god Hephaistos, auction-listed in ways that occasionally allow mere ornamental citation to stand in for attention to how such
themes emerge and what details the coins actually show. The third listing below, for a near-unique
Philip I, overwhelms us with much we do not need to know, yet omits to point us to the previous
Asia Minor reverses clearly treating the same or essentially the same interaction; it insists on a Homeric link (
Il. 18) that in fact never features
Athena, even as it neglects the myth-lore of another encounter that clearly suggests the design. What does not
help at such points, detracts; Isegrim's much more skeletal listings for those earlier coins * (accessed by simply rt: hephaestos and rt
athena) leave the water unmuddied and thus a lot clearer than long hyped descriptions contrived just to make a big stir. There is one learned listing that does suit the case, [LINK REMOVED BY ADMIN] as we learn from a number of sources, e.g.
Apollodorus (3.14.6 [
http://www.theoi.com/Text/Apollodorus3.html#14 ]),
Athena once sought out Hephaistos to get him to make her a new set of arms, an odd story with somewhat grotesque repercussions that have less to do with the coins we are mainly addressing than the meeting of "pure" and "
applied" craft and their divine patrons that these virtuoso productions directly recall. The three coins with their listings:
Commodus,
Thyatira,
Lydia,
AE43 (
RPC 2946, there not pictured;
cf. 2947 with 1539 and 9954 [Silandus, also
Lydia]):
T.
Aurelius Barbarus, strategus. Laureate, draped, and
cuirassed bust right; c/m: laureate and draped
bust right within oval
incuse / Hephaestus seated left on wreathed
cippus, putting finishing touches with hammer on a Corinthian helmet set on low
column, while
Athena, standing left, holding spear and
shield, touches top of
column;
EPI CTPA TIT-OV AVP-HLIOV BAPBAPO in
legend. For coin
type:
cf. SNG Copenhagen 600 (Rape of
Persephone; same
obv. die);
BMC Lydia 82; for c/m:
Howgego 93. As related by
Homer (Iliad 18),
Achilles’ armor was lost when,
still sulking in
his tent, he allowed
his companion Patroclus to wear it while he spurred the
Greeks into a battle on the plains below
Troy. Overconfident, Patroclus
met Hector in single
combat. Mistaking Patroclus for
Achilles, the
Trojan hero Hector brutally killed him and dragged off Patroclus’ still-armored corpse as a war prize.
Achilles’ mother, the sea nymph
Thetis, persuaded the god Hephaestus to construct a new set of armor, among which a highly decorated
shield was included.
Sept.
Severus,
Thyatira,
Lydia,
AE46:
Asiaticus Hermogenes, strategus. Laureate, draped, and
cuirassed bust right /
EPI CTPA•A-CIATIKOV EPMOGEN(OVC), QVATEIPH•/NWN in two lines in
exergue, Hephaestus seated left on wreathed
cippus, putting finishing touches wth hammer on a Corinthian helmet set on low
column, while
Athena, standing left and holding spear and
shield, touches top of
column.
SNG Copenhagen -;
Waddington 7067. VF, red-brown
patina, light roughness and overall scratches. Extremely
rare, the second known specimen.
Philip I,
Phrygia,
Ancyra,
AE35:
P. Aru. Zoilos as the First
Archon of Ankyra. Laureate, draped and
cuirassed bust of
Philip I right seen from behind / Hephaistos seated right, holding hammer and tongs, and Cyclops standing left, holding hammer; between them anvil; behind anvil,
Athena standing left, raising
arm and holding
shield. J. Nollé, "
Athena in der Schmiede
des Hephaistos,"
JNG XLV (1995),
abb. 1 = U.
Werz, "Zu einer unbekannten Praegedarstellung," SM 44, 175/176 (December 1994), 1 = Leu 50, 350. XF, wonderful dark green
patina, the
reverse with a reddish sandy wash. Extremely
rare with only three specimens known, this being the only one not in a museum
collection, and an amazing mythological
reverse taken directly from Homer's Iliad. This dramatic large
diameter issue of Phrygian
Ancyra is extremely
rare today. In 1990, an example with the same
reverse die was sold by Leu, and at the time it was believed by the cataloguer to be unique. It was purchased at the sale either by or on behalf of the
Winterthur collection (
inv. G6997), where it now resides, although a further specimen is in the
collection of the
American Numismatic Society (
inv. 1974.226.101). Our coin represents the third known example of this remarkable issue and, seemingly, the only one available to the public. The
obverse carries a
superb military portrait of
Philip I 'the Arab' while the
reverse depicts a scene derived from Homer's Iliad (Book 18). The lame blacksmith god, Hephaistos is seated on the left and a Cyclops on the right, and together they hammer an object held by tongs on the anvil between them while
Athena looks on from behind and holds a
shield. They are not just forging any new trinket for the Olympian gods, but rather a set of new
weapons and armor ordered to replace the equipment lost by the Achaean hero
Achilles. While sulking at the abuses of Agamemnon, Achilles' friend Patroklos
had donned
his armor and joined the battle around the walls of
Troy, where he was slain by the
Trojan prince, Hektor. The armor and
weapons were claimed by Hektor as booty, thereby leaving
Achilles unable to avenge the death of Patroklos and bring
Troy closer to its long-prophesied destruction. Seeing her son's plight,
Thetis begged the Olympian gods to provide
Achilles with new
weapons and armor. This request was granted and Hephaistos forged new equipment for
Achilles. Although
Homer does not explicitly mention the presence of
Athena at the forge of Hephaistos, she appears here as the
patron goddess of
Achilles and of warfare. It is unclear whether the
shield carried by
Athena on the coin is intended to represent her own or perhaps more likely, the fabulous
shield made for
Achilles, which was decorated with scenes drawn from all facets of ancient daily life. The scene is probably derived from a sculptural model, as a first century
frieze depicting a similar scene is known from
Rome. In the
frieze the
work of Hephaistos is overseen by both
Athena and
Thetis. According to the
reverse inscription, the coin was issued during the second tenure of P. Aru. Zoilos as the First
Archon of
Ancyra. Few details are known about this individual other than that he was a prominent local figure who held the highest civic office twice in the mid third century. He is known to have
signed several other coin series of
Ancyra during
his second archonate under
Philip I.
Heritage World Long Beach Signature Sale 3005.20086 (2009)
Price realized: $3,000 +
[
BROKEN LINK REMOVED BY ADMIN]
* Also see
Schultz,
Magnesia 307-08, for two smaller (
Maximinus I) issues (
http://books.google.com/books?id=gvgddI5MMTAC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0)