Lykurgos and the nymph AmbrosiaDear friends of ancient
mythology!
The botanical season, in which I roamed through
meadows and forests almost daily as a volunteer mapper for the Stuttgart Natural
History Museum to discover new plants, is coming to an end. Now I have more time again to take care of
numismatics and ancient
mythology. And finally I have found a coin worthy of being presented here. Its condition is suboptimal, but it is one of the rarer ones.
The coin:Syria, Coele-Syria,
Damascus,
Trebonianus Gallus, AD 252-253
AE 25, 9.20g
Obv.: [
IMP C]
VIB TREB GA[LLO
AVG]
Bust, draped and
cuirassed, seen from behind, laureate, r.
Rev.:
COL ΔAMA CO METRO.
The nymph Ambrosia, nude, standing frontally,
head n. r., holding in both
hands Vines, her feet growing out of the earth.
Ref.:
RPC IX, 1949 (there are several slight variations of the
rev. image, here e.g. the
grapes below the elbows)
The HyadesThe Hyades, from Greek.
Hyades (= "who make it rain"), were
nymphs of
Greek mythology, already mentioned by
Homer in the Iliad. As a constellation, the Hyades are found as a V-shaped
star cluster in the constellation of
Taurus. The largest
star among them is Aldebaran at the bottom left.
(see picture)
There were already different views in
antiquity about their number and their lineage. In Hesiod there were five. According to Hygin, the Okeanide Pleione (or Aithra) gave birth to 12 daughters and the son Hyas to
Atlas. When the latter was killed in the
hunt,
Zeus placed seven of them in the starry sky as Pleiades, and the other five, who
had especially wept for him, as Hyades.
Pherekydes knows seven: Ambrosia, Eudora, Pedile, Koronis, Polyxo, Phyto and Thyone. Their mother was
Boiotia. Among them we now find our Ambrosia. They looked after
Dionysus in
his childhood and their role was probably thought to parallel that of the
nymphs Adrasteia and Ide, who raised and guarded little
Zeus on
Crete.
The nymph AmbrosiaIn describing the coin, Barclay
Head writes to the
reverse "Maenad(?)" and indeed, for certain
identification, a reference to the terrible
fate of Ambrosia, who is not depicted on the coin, is missing. Nevertheless, I adopt here the description from
RPC IX, 1949, which Leu Numismatik also did. That the nymph's legs grow out of the earth is very unusual and could be a reference to
Gaia, who plays a not insignificant role in the tale of Nonnos.
There are also different genealogies for Ambrosia, Greek
Ambrosia (= "immortal", with emphasis on the i(!). In Hygin she was the daughter of Pleione and
Atlas. She became a
Dodonaean nymph and a nurse of
Dionysus. In Nonnos she became the companion of the wine god
Dionysus, a
maenad.
The most impressive description of her
fate is found in Nonnos (
Dionysiaka, lib. 21). These events took place after
Dionysus had passed through Thrace on
his way east or on
his return from
India.
Lykurgos, King of ThraceLykurgos appears in all mythologies as a fanatical opponent of
Dionysus. Most often, Lykurgos is used to refer to the mythical king of the Edonians in Thrace. When
Dionysus wanted to go from
Asia across the Hellespont back to Europe, Lykurgos offered him
his friendship. But when
Dionysus translated
his maenads first, Lykurgus ordered them all to be killed along with
Dionysus.
Dionysus, however, was warned by a
man called Tharops and just managed to escape to the other
side of the Hellespont.
His companions, the Maenads, were all killed on the orders of Lykurgus. Here the name Ambrosia already appears. After
Dionysus had crossed with
his army, a battle took place in which Lykurgos was defeated and captured.
Dionysus had his eyes gouged out and crucified. He handed over
his kingdom to Tharops (
Diodorus Siculus).
In another version it is said that Lykurgus taunted
Dionysus and finally chased him away, but captured
his companions. Then
Dionysus struck Lykurgus with madness, so that he mistook
his son Dryas for a vine, struck him down with an
axe and cut off
his own feet until he regained
his senses. A great barrenness then came over
his land and the oracle answered that it would only end when Lykurgus
had shed
his mortality. Then the Edons led him to Mount Pangaios and
had him torn apart by horses (Apollodor).
Others tell that he did not want to acknowledge
Dionysus as a god, and when he was drunk with wine and wanted to rape
his own mother, he thought the wine was poison and ordered all the vines to be uprooted. Then
Dionysus drove him mad, so that he slew
his wife and son and cut off one of
his own feet, which he thought was a vine. Then Dionsos throw him ro
his panthers on the mountain of Rhodopes (
Hygin. Fab.).
There are other versions of
his end. But even though
Dionysus always
had to flee from him at the beginning, he was able to capture him afterwards. He
had him bound and scourged with vines so violently that Lykurgos
had to shed tears. These fell to the ground and cabbage grew from them. This is
still today an enemy of the vine.
(Schol. Aristoph. in Equis.)
In the oldest story (
Homer, Iliad) he pursued the nurses of little
Dionysus on Mount
Nysa. These threw their
thyrses to the ground, while Lykurgus wounded them with
his hatchet. Little
Dionysus threw himself into the sea, where
Thetis picked him up and comforted him. The gods were enraged by the atrocity and struck Lykurgos with blindness. Shortly afterwards he died.
There was a tragedy about him by Aeschylus, but it has not survived.
Already Diodoros, who reports the battle between Lykurgos and
Dionysos, states that
Antimachos transferred this battle to
Arabia. This was taken up by Nonnos in
his extensive
work "Dionysiaka". He narrates:
On its way to
India,
his army reached
Arabia via Tyros, Byblos and Lebanon. There a son of Ares ruled, the terrible Lykurgos, who slew all strangers and wanderers, slaughtered them and decorated
his palace with their limbs. Lykurgos pursued the female companions of
Dionysus, here called
Bassarides (after Greek "
Bassaris" = "fox fur", which they wore like the
Nebris, the deer skin) and took up the fight against them. In particular, the
maenad Ambrosia, one of the Hyades, resisted him valiantly; almost overcome, she was transformed into a vine by
Gaia, Mother Earth. With her tendrils she inextricably entwined herself around Lykurgos, and since by Rheia's grace human speech was preserved for her, she mockingly addressed her opponent. Ares could not free
his son, but at least took the divine battle-axe from him. The Maenads surrounded the bound opponent and scourged him cruelly. At Rheia's request, Poseidon caused an earthquake in
Arabia. At the same time, the inhabitants of
Arabia, the "
Nysaeans", were seized with madness, so that they killed and slaughtered their own children. The maltreated Lykurgos did not bow to
Dionysus, but persisted in
his defiance of all the gods. At last
Hera took pity on him, cut the tendrils of ambrosia and thus freed Lykurgos. He was later blinded by
Zeus, but the Arabs worshipped him as a god with sacrifices. Ambrosia, however, ascended from the earth into the sky and was transferred to the constellation of the Hyades.
This would have been a nice theme for Ovid's "
Metamorphoses", but Nonnos lived almost 500 years after Ovid!
And now it also becomes geographically understandable that this motif with Ambrosia was struck precisely on coins from
Damascus. Otherwise
Damascus only appears once: On
his way to
India, the king of
Damascus confronted him on the Euphrates. He was flayed alive (Ranke-Graves). But I have not been able to find out anything more about this.
Art history:The motif of Ambrosia has been taken up several times in ancient art. I have selected the following pictures:
(1) This image is from an Apulian red-figure vase from the Late Classical period, c. 330 BC, and is now in the Staatl. Antikensammlung,
Munich.
King Lycurgus holds the body of Ambrosia, whom he has just slain with
his sword. The angry god summons an Erinnye to drive him mad. She is depicted as a winged huntress whose arms and hair are draped with poisonous snakes.
Dionysus wears elaborate clothing with high boots and holds a tree branch in
his hand. Behind him, the
thyrsos of a
maenad is
still visible. This vase does not have the vine tendrils that are present on our coin and so typical of the Nonnos narrative.
(see picture)
(2) The mosaic pictured above was found in Herculaneum and is now in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples. It shows the
king of Thrace, Lycurgus, the enemy of
Dionysus, attacking the nymph Ambrosia. The latter is in the process of transforming herself into a vine and
binding Lycurgus with her shoots to deliver him to the vengeance of
Dionysus. It seems to grow out of the earth, which is reflected in the depiction on our coin. So at this time the version that Nonnos later adopted is already known!
(see picture)
Ambrosia, the food of the godsWe already know that Ambrosia means "immortal" in Greek. And so Ambrosia was the food reserved for the immortals. Whoever ate it became immortal himself. This happened to
Tantalus, for example, and
Thetis anointed her son
Achilles with Ambrosia to make him immortal.
The first to receive ambrosia was
Zeus, to whom it was brought by wild doves from the mountain tops of
Crete. In
Homer, the terms "ambrosia" and "nectar" are
still interchangeable. Later, ambrosia was used to refer to food and nectar to refer to something to drink.
Ambrosia was used as food, drink, balm, ointment and as a remedy. It was famous for its fragrance and would have tasted sweet. Rationalists thought it was honey, e.g. Roscher: "This fits wonderfully with honey, which was also conceived as a gift from the gods." The nymph Ambrosia would then have been the personification of honeydew.
The immortal horses were also fed with ambrosia. This has also been inferred the other way round: since horses are usually fed oats, ambrosia could simply have been oatmeal!
The idea of nectar and ambrosia serves the human desire for immortality, present from early on in all cultures, and for a magic cure to achieve it. This is back in a big way today, when ageing is seen as a disease, as seen in the billions spent on anti-ageing products. Behind the desire for eternal life, however, the present is too often forgotten.
Ragweed, an allergenic neophyteAs an amateur botanist, I would like to conclude by mentioning the
mugwort ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia), or ragweed for short. This is an invasive neophyte and originates from the Mediterranean region. It has been known in
Germany since 1860, but as a
field weed it was always tied to humans. Since the 1990s, it began to spread under its own steam and has now become a major threat. Typical features are its strong branching and tall inflorescences. Its pollen has a strong allergenicity that is 5x higher than that of grass pollen. Truly no food of gods!
Notes:(1)
Pherekydes of Syros (* between 584 and 581 BC on the island of Syros, one of the
Cyclades) was an ancient Greek mythographer and cosmologist in the time of the Pre-Socratics. .
(2)
Nonnos of Panopolis was a
Byzantine poet of the 5th century. He is considered the author of the Dionysiaka, the last great epic of
antiquity. In 48 books or cantos and approx. 21,300 hexameters, he describes the triumphant march of
Dionysus to
India.
(3)
Dodona in Northern
Greece was an ancient Greek sanctuary and oracle. It was considered the oldest oracle in
Greece and, after
Delphi, the largest supra-regional oracle in the Greek world. The rustling of an oak tree sacred to
Zeus was used for divination, and later the flight of doves was also used for divination.
(4)
Antimachos of Kolophon was a Greek poet and grammarian who lived around 450 BC. He is considered one of the founders of the epic.
(5) Nysa is considered to be the place where
Dionysus was raised and nourished by
nymphs. This is probably only a figment of the imagination. Later, various places were called Nysa. Nonnos relocates Nysa to
Arabia.
(6) A
neophyte is a
plant that only naturalised in Europe after 1492. A neophyte is invasive if it spreads uncontrollably.
Sources:(1)
Homer, Ilias
(2) Apollodor, Bibliotheka
(3) Hyginus, Fabulae, De astronomia
(4) Nonnos, Dionysiaka
Secondary literature: (1) Heinrich-Wilhelm Roscher, Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie, 1884
(2) Benjamin Hederich, Gründliches mythologisches Lexikon, 1770 (Nachdruck)
(3) Barclay
Head,
Historia Numorum (online Version von Ed Snible)
(4) Der Kleine
PaulyInternet sources:(1)
Wikipedia(2) theoi.com
(3)
RPC IX
Best regards
Jochen