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Author Topic: Black Sea Alexander coin portraiture  (Read 1118 times)

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Offline Reid Goldsborough

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Black Sea Alexander coin portraiture
« on: November 04, 2005, 04:04:29 pm »
Here's yet another Alexander post...

Some of the very late Black Sea Alexanders depict what most numismatists regard as a portrait of Mithradates the Great because of the similarity between the portrait and other coins of Mithradates VI. The issue I've been looking into are somewhat earlier Alexander-type tetradrachms from Mesembria and Odessos that depict a "fat Herakles." These coins can be attributed as Price 1039-1101 and 1177-1181 and as Karayotov 232-680.

The portrait on these diverges so greatly from the traditional Herakles that I believe it may well depict a local Thracian dynast, though I could find no evidence of this and I've yet to find even any discussion in the literature of this as a possibility, with the one exception being a 1968 Numismatic Chronicle article by Martin Price in which he says that the portrait is "possibly a local ruler" (I'm not able to read material written in Bulgarian and other languages in which this possibility may have been discussed).

These coins are dated 175-65 BC, according to Price, and 175-100 BC, according to Ivan Karayotov in his 1994 book The Coinage of Mesambria. Kotys II (sometimes referred to as Kotys) was king of the Odrysae, the most powerful Thracian tribe, during the second century BC. He allied with Perseas/Perseus of Macedonia in its war against Rome. He's known to have minted bronze coins, according to Yordanka Youroukova in his 1974 monograph Coins of the Ancient Thracians.

How about this as a possibility: Perhaps these "fat Herakles" tetradrachms depicted Kotys as Herakles just as later Black Sea Alexanders depicted Mithradates as Herakles. Mithradates fought the Romans, the last Hellenistic ruler to do so, just as Kotys did earlier. Perhaps the "fat Herakles" design was used as a type during and after Kotys' reign.

There's some additional variation in the portraits of Black Sea tetradrachms after these "fat Herakles" types and before the Mithradates types, so perhaps one or more other Thracian dynasts are depicted on some of these latter coins as well, with one possibility being Mostis, who reigned during the late second and early first centuries BC, is also known to have minted coinage, and also fought the Romans.

Any of this sound credible?
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Offline esnible

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Re: Black Sea Alexander coin portraiture
« Reply #1 on: November 04, 2005, 10:01:29 pm »
I have a 'fat Herakles' from Arados.  Could this also be Kotys?

Offline Reid Goldsborough

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Re: Black Sea Alexander coin portraiture
« Reply #2 on: November 04, 2005, 11:14:17 pm »
Doesn't seem likely. Too far away, geographically and temporally. Was Kotys even active in Phoenicia? That is a pretty jowly Herakles though, clearly divergent as well from the typical Herakles iconography.
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Lawrence Woolslayer

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Re: Black Sea Alexander coin portraiture
« Reply #3 on: November 05, 2005, 09:28:04 pm »
I guess that it is reasonable to assume Herakles morphed into any number of rulers, as is sometimes obvious to be morphed into pseudo-Alexander looking coin. 
Also reasonable to assume local engraver set a standard for a time that is replicated long after.  It is known engravers traveled to make dies at other nearby mints sometimes, or, make dies and send to other mints.

 

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