Not to detract from Jochen’s wonderful posting of
his coin depicting Anakreon, I will post my example of a ridiculously
rare coin separately but thank Jochen for prompting me to get off my dead hooha and post.
My coin was minted under
Gordian III in the Cilician city of Soli-Pompeiopolis depicting the stoic philosopher/poet Crantor.
AE 31; 12.32 g;
Die Axis 6h
Obverse:
AVT K M ANT GORDIANOC CEB;
P P;
Radiate, draped and
cuirassed bust right
Reverse:
POMPEIOPOLEITWN;
AST (=6
Assaria);
STT (= year 306 = 240/1 AD); Beardless
bust of Crantor right
Ref:
Ziegler 594 (same dies)
Ziegler lists the coin as depicting the
bust of Philomen, but with a (?) because of
his uncertainty. Philomen, though, as argued by
Franke comes from
Syracuse and thus is not a likely candidate. Also, the
portrait being beardless suggests a poet and not a philosopher, Crantor was both. The beardless depiction also most likely eliminates Chryssipus, another
Soli Philosopher, whose depictions on coins are beareded.
Much of what we know of Crantor has been provided to us by Diogenes Laërtius in
his work The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. Crantor was born in
Soli in
Cilicia (before it was Pompeiopolis), (c 340/335 – 275 BC). He was a stoic philosopher of the Old Academy. He was a fellow student of Polemo in the school of Xenocrates at
Athens and was the first commentator on
Plato. According to Diogenes Laërtius Crantor supposedly wrote some poems that were deposited in the temple of
Athena in
Soli:
"The following verses of Antagoras the poet are also attributed to Crantor; the subject is love, and they run thus:
My mind is much perplexed; for what, O Love,
Dare I pronounce your origin? May I
Call you chiefest of the immortal Gods,
Of all the children whom dark Erebus
And Royal Night bore on the billowy waves
Of widest Ocean? Or shall I bid you hail,
As son of proudest
Venus? or of Earth?
Or of the untamed winds? so fierce you rove,
Bringing mankind sad cares, yet not unmixed
With happy
good, so two-fold is your nature."
Crantor’s greatest
work, none of which exists in the original but has been preserved in numerous extracts by Plutarch’s,
Consolation to Apollonius, and in
Cicero’s
De consolatione, is
On Grief, a letter of condolence to
his friend Hippocles on the death of
his children.
Cicero modeled much of
his two works,
De consolatione and
Tusculan Disputations on Crantor’s
On Grief. Crantor paid especial attention to ethics, and arranged "
good" things in the following order--virtue,
health, pleasure, riches.
Thank you Dr.
Lawrence for translation
help.
c.rhodes
Sources:
1) Encyclopedia Britannica 11th ed 1910-1911
2) Diogenes Laërtius
3) Plutarch, Consolation to Apollonius
4) P. R.
Franke, Zu einem Munzbildnis
des Stoikers Chrysippus, Festschrift for Karl-Heinz Ilting, pg. 387.
