Great
thread this, I love all the depictions of lions!
I think the lions shown on ancient Greek and
Roman coins represent the European
lion. To quote from Herodotus-
These places (northern Greece) abound with lions and wild bulls, the large horns of which are carried into Greece. On the one side of the Nestos, which flows through Abdera, and the other the Achelous passing through Acarnania are the limits beyond which no lions are found. In the intermediate region between these two places lions are produced, but no one has ever seen them in Europe beyond the Nestos in the east or the Achelous in the west.The European
lion was almost certainly used by the
Romans in gladiator
combat up until the late first century at which point I believe it was driven to extinction, and replaced in the
arena by lions from
North Africa. It is generally thought that the European
Lion probably descended from the same ancestor as the Asiatic
Lion. Compared to the fuller maned African
lion, the male Asiatic
lion has a relatively short, sparse mane and so I believe that the European
lion also
had a smaller mane.
The
lion sculpture from the 4th century BC, in Koropi,
Greece clearly shows a smaller mane, as does the
lion on my silver
didrachm from
Lucania, Velia. They are certainly European lions.
So as I’ve mentioned before images of extinct species on coins, sculptures and other ancient artifacts are a kind of fossil. What I like to think of as techno-fossils because the images are created by human technology.
Regards,
Steve