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Thasos, Thrace, c. 150 - 42 B.C.
| The man-eating Stymphalian birds, with beaks of bronze and sharp metallic feathers they could shoot at their victims, were defeated by Heracles (Hercules) in his sixth labor for Eurystheus. The birds were pets of Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. They lived in a marsh in Arcadia where they swarmed over the countryside, destroying crops, fruit trees, and killing townspeople. Heracles could not go into the marsh to reach the nests of the birds, as the ground would not support his weight. Athena, noticing the hero's plight, gave Heracles a rattle called krotala (similar to castanets), which Hephaestus had made especially for the occasion. Heracles shook the krotala, frightening the birds into the air, then shot many of them with arrows tipped with poisonous blood from the slain Hydra. The rest flew far away, never to plague Arcadia again. Heracles brought some of the slain birds to Eurystheus as proof of his success. The surviving birds made a new home on an island of Aretias in the Euxine Sea. The Argonauts later encountered them there. |  |
GB67669. Bronze AE 20, BMC Thrace p. 225, 105; SNG Cop 1057 - 1059 var. (monogram); Le Rider Thasiennes, p. 189, pl. V, 60 - 63 var. (same); SNG Evelpidis 1107 var. (same), F, green patina, Thasos (Thasos, Greece) mint, weight 7.485g, maximum diameter 20.3mm, die axis 180o, c. 150 - 42 B.C.; obverse draped bust of Artemis right, wearing stephane, bow and quiver over shoulder; reverse ΘAΣION (downward behind), Herakles standing right, wearing only the Nemean Lion's skin draped over his arms and down his back, drawing bow about to shoot an arrow at Stymphalian birds, 
monogram lower right; scarce; SOLD
monogram lower right; scarce; SOLD 
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