I have picked up these 3 silver Greek coins for around 25 dollar a piece, I can't say no to that! I would like to share them with you together with some research I performed for each coin. Byzantion, Thrace ½ Siglos (340–320 B.C.) Obverse: Bull standing left on dolphin left, ΠY above. Reverse: Incuse punch of mill-sail pattern. Reference: SNG BM Black Sea 36–41; SNG Stancomb 14; SNG Copenhagen 478–9. Byzantion was founded by Megarian colonists in 657 B.C. and was a prosperous city because of its control of the vital grain trade from the Black sea. The city was taken by the Persian Empire at the time of the Scythian campaign (513 BC) of King Darius I and was added to the administrative province of Skudra. Byzantion used the Persian siglos as currency, just like most of the other cities in Asia Minor until the age of Alexander. In 340 BCE Phillip II of Macedonia laid siege to Byzantion. The city had initially contacted Phillip when threatened by Thrace, however, when they refused to side with Phillip and turn against Athens, he attacked but soon retreated after the Persian army threatened war. Alexander the Great, understood the strategic value of the city and annexed the area when he moved across the Bosporus into Asia Minor on his way to defeat Darius III and conquer the Persian Empire. After this, the silver coinage of Byzantion changed from the Persic to the Rhodian standard. Masikytes, Lycia Hemidrachm - Lycian League (48–23 B.C.) Obverse: Laureate head of Apollo right. Reverse: M-A, Kithara/Lyre; serpent coiled around omphalos lower left; all within incuse square. Reference: BMC 19.63.4, vgl.Troxell 97. After the defeat of Antiochos the Romans in 188 B.C. gave Lycia to the Rhodians. In 168 B.C. the Romans restored the Lycians their full freedom, and the Lycian towns now formed themselves into an independent League under Roman auspices, which lasted until the reign of Claudius, 43 A.D. who made the country into a province with Pamphylia. The coinage of this new Lycian League has much in common with the contemporary coinage of the Achaean League in Peloponnesos. It consists of silver drachms and hemidrachms of degraded Rhodian weight characterized by the reappearance of a sharply defined incuse square on the reverse. The coins recognize two districts, also called "monetary districts:" Masikytes and Kragos. Both named after mountain ranges, in which presumably the communities lived and conducted business. Where coinage before the Lycian League had often been stamped LY for Lycia, it was now stamped KP for Kranos or MA for Masikytes. Chalkis, Euboia Drachm (340–294 B.C.) Obverse: Head of the nymph Chalkis or Hera? right. Reverse: X-AΛ (retrograde), eagle flying right, grappling with a serpent. Reference: Sear 2483, BMC 8.111.61. This important Ionic town carried on an extensive commerce in early times with all parts of the Hellenic world. Their colonists founded thirty townships on the peninsula of Chalcidice and several important cities in Magna Graecia, such as Naxos, Rhegion and Cumae. Its mineral produce, metal-work, purple and pottery not only found markets among these settlements, but were distributed over the Mediterranean in the ships of Corinth and Samos. With the help of these allies, Chalkis engaged the rival league of its neighbour Eretria in the Lelantine War, by which it acquired the best agricultural district of Euboea and became the chief city of the island. Early in the 6th century BC, its prosperity was broken by a disastrous war with the Athenians, who expelled the ruling aristocracy and settled a cleruchy on the site in 507 B.C. Between this date and the time of Epaminondas, circa 370 B.C., it can hardly have been in a position to strike coins in its own name. The introduction of it's coinage in its own name is the coin above with the female head being probably the celestial Hera, a lunar goddess worshipped on Mount Dirphys, overlooking the Chalkidian plain. The disks which encircle the head may symbolize the Planets. The Eagle devouring a Serpent seems to be an emblem of the Olympian Zeus, as on the coins of Elis, for Chalkis one of the chief shrines was that of Zeus Olympios. Please post any coins you find appropiate!
Great coins at great prices - they are all fine, but that Masikytes, Lycia Hemidrachm - Lycian League with the lyre really wows me.
The coin from Masikytes with the Lyre is indeed the nicest out of all of them, does nobody else have this coin? I think it is a quite unknown period, this is my first coin that is so close around the period of B.C. to A.D.
