Hi Taras,
Thanks for the info. I never knew anything about him, aside from the fact that he once owned the greatest collection of Taras coins, probably even better than the Ratto-Cote collection.
I also never knew that he was Greek. I had always assumed that he was an Italian from Taranto, and that he collected Taras coins because of "local pride". If he was Greek, I wonder why he had a fascination with Taras coins. He could have selected any Greek coins to specialize in.
Meepzorp
Dear
Meepzorp,
maybe your alien nature prevents you from fully grasping the aesthetics of us humans
Seriously, there's no need to live in Taranto to appreciate the beauty of tarentine coins, or to realize that historically it was the greatest polis of
Magna Graecia (when I say
Magna Graecia I say Greek
Italy, technically Greek
Sicily was not "
Magna Graecia").
Just some samples of
men who have devoted their studies to Taras, no one of them was moved by any form of local pride:
Michel
Vlasto.......................
French of Greek origins.
Claudius Côte.......................
French.
Arthur
Evans........................ English.
Pierre Wuilleumier................
French.
George
Brauer..................... American.
Wolfgang
Fischer-Bossert.......
German.
I think that local pride is not the best motivation to study, as it makes little unbiased.
I myself, in my own very small way as collector and aspiring scholar, I am not moved by any local proud. Taranto is the city where I was born, but I spent there the shortest
part of my life and I am not in any way attached to it now. I consider myself more half Florentine and half Neapolitan, cause I lived in those cities the very formative years of my life. Eventually I consider myself simply
Italian, not closely tied to any city.
A final note, it could seem foolish, but I can tell you that today most of the inhabitants of Taranto have only a remote idea of the great past of the city in which they live, vaguely reminiscent of some of the lessons in elementary school maybe, and nothing more. Let alone the boy on
dolphin, probably only 1% of them knows that it was the main
type minted on the coins of the ancient Taras, for Tarentines of today the boy on
dolphin is simply the symbol of the city's football team, and the main logo seen during their parties with alcohol... inter alia... the team sucks, and the beer is disgustingly undrinkable.
Bye
Nico