Once again, as so often, it was Gordian_Guy who found the labeled
Apollo Iatros, which I remembered existed but could not remember where. He even found it on the plate (in Pick's Thraksiche Münzbilder,
JdI 1898, Taf. 10) that I
had myself sent to him. I attach the lower
part of the plate which shows two coins of
Apollonia Pontica, figs. 29 and 30, which show an archaic-looking cult statue (and here, given the
antiquity of the place, it might be really archaic) clearly labeled
. (But
Head,
HN 278, referring to Peparethos (p. 313) notes that
Svoronos reassigned Pick's Taf. 10, 29 to that
mint). In either case, we see an archaic statue of
Apollo labeled 'of
Apollo Iatros'.
But what is more, showing the familial relationship in cult of
Apollo and the Pergamene triad, he found the Bizya
medal in Jurukova's monograph, one of a set of real medals, all well over 30mm and up to 42mm in
diameter, issued for Philip at Bizya. The most relevant one is her no. 129, where
Apollo holding a laurel twig in
his r. hand stands, cross-legged, by an
omphalos with a
snake winding around it. Left of this center group is
Asklepios, with
Telesphoros hooded but in short clothes and, holding something rectangular, standing right under Apollo's laurel between
Asklepios and
Apollo; at right is
Hygieia; in the
field above, represented like
statues on bases, are a seated
Tyche and a
Zeus hurling a
thunderbolt.
I
still need to learn what the object is that
Telesphoros holds, in case it might correspond to what he holds on the coin heading this
thread.
There are other medals of this character, with meaningful groups of significant deities on the
reverse, in what is obviously, I think, the same set. For all of them, beginning with Jurukova's no. 129, which is
Varbanov II (Engl.) no. 1507, see
ibid., nos. 1508, 1511, 1513, 1546, to cite only those which seem quite strictly to belong with no. 1507. I assume that
Jurukova has studied and explained these as a group, but it will take me some time to get a copy of her
work,
Die Münzprägung von Bizye, 1981. I can't ask anyone else to translate that much continuous
German for me, and I ought to have obtained this
work long before now.
Somewhere in my notes I may have a reference to something, maybe by Alföldi,** that was a rather thorough discussion of the Pergamene cult (but I haven't seen it for at least five years, so...). I need to find out what
Telesphoros might hold, and why.
** No, but in the same notebook. I was reading Erwin Ohlemutz,
Die Kulte und Heiligtümer der Götter in Pergamon. 1940, rpt. 1968. This, too, will have to be sought through Interlibrary Loan.
Pat L.