Dear Friends of ancient mythology! This is the story of an enlightenment. The Coin: Thrace, Bizya, Geta, AD 209-21 AE 26, 10.05g, 26.17mm, 210° Obv.: AVT KPA Π - CEΠ ΓETA CE Bust, draped and cuirassed, seen from behind, laureate, r. Rev.: BIZ - Y - HNΩN A banquet scene: Bearded man reclining on kline to left, resting with l. arm on pillow, touching with r. hand shoulder of a woman seated half-right at his feet, youth in short chiton standing to left, his r. hand on opening of a high amphora, behind him a tree with armor hanging in twigs; on the right side forepart of horse to left, raising l. forefoot; beneath the kline a tripod(?), in the upper field a shield. Ref.: Jurukova 63 (different obv. legend); Varbanov (engl.) 1491 var. extremely rare, about VF, nice green Patina Mythology: Sometimes it is suggested that the reverse shows a scene of the myth of Tereus, Prokne and Philomele. This interpretation is very questionable. I will talk about that in the second part of this article. But first the myth. Tereus, son of the god of war Ares, was king of Thrace. Because he had helped King Pandion of Athens in the war against the king of Thebes, Pandion gave him his daughter Prokne as his wife. Prokne gave him a son, Itys. After a few years Philomele, Prokne's sister, wanted to visit her sister in Thrace. Tereus picked her up from Athens. Because of her beauty and her beautiful voice he burned in passion to her, seduced and raped her. To conceal this crime, he cut her tongue out of her mouth so that she could no longer betray him, and hid her in the forest. He told Prokne that she had died on the way. But the mute Pilomele has woven a cloth in which she described everything that had happened to her and that she was still alive. She succeeded in sending this cloth to her sister. Prokne pretended to celebrate a feast for Dionysus, and as she raved in her rage through the forest, she discovered her sister. When she had heard everything and saw what a bad state Philomele was in, the two decided to avenge themselves terribly on Tereus. The most terrible of all versions comes from Ovid's metamorphoses: Prokne killed her son Itys, cut him into pieces, cooked him and presented him to Tereus for his meal. When Tereus asked where his son Itys was, she replied that he was already there and threw the head of Itys on the table. Tereus jumped up, drew his sword and threw himself at them, but they were turned into birds, Prokne into a nightingale, Philomele into a swallow, and escaped. Tereus himself was transformed into a hoopoe, whose long beak looks like a sabre. Background: Originally Tereus came from Daulis in Phokis, but he is also found in Pagai in the Megaris. Sophocles first moved him to Thrace. His tragedy 'Tereus' from after 414 B.C. unfortunately got lost. In Aristophanes' "Birds" Tereus calls the birds to a meeting. The legend originally seems to have been an etiological animal fairy tale, which was supposed to explain the birdcalls. The swallow (Philomele) cannot sing, the song of the nightingale (Prokne) sounds lamenting and reminds of an 'Itu, iti' (= Itys). Ezra Pound recorded this legend for one of his Pisan cantos (IV): ... And by the curved, carved foot of the couch, claw-foot and lion head, an old man seated Speaking in the low drone...: Itys! Et ter flebiliter, Itys, Ityn! And she went toward the window and cast her down, "All the while, the while, swallows crying: Ityn! "It is Cabestan's heart in the dish." "It is Cabestan's heart in the dish? "No other taste shall change this." And she went toward the window, the slim white stone bar Making a double arch; Firm even fingers held to the firm pale stone; Swung for a moment, and the wind out of Rhodez Caught in the full of her sleeve. ...the swallows crying: 'Tis! 'Tis! Ytis! This is only one part of the canto that deals with the incomprehensibility of beauty. The poem begins with the smouldering walls of Troy - the consequences of the violent theft of beauty. Here Philomele is transformed into a night gall and Prokne into a swallow. Pound interweaves this ancient Greek legend with the Provencal legend of the knight Cabestan, whose heart was served by his jealous wife of his lover. The name Itys merges imperceptibly with Cabestan and bldet 'Ityn'. Inimitably the answer of the swallows to the question: "It is Cabestan's heart in the dish?" "...'Tis! Tis! Ytis!" (following Eva Hesse, Ezra Pound - Dichtung und Prosa, 1959) Objections: In a coin description at CoinArchives CNG writes: "Possibly the local representation of a myth in which the Bizynian King Tereus is involved...The coin type allegorically describes the moment when Tereus serves his son's body to his wife." But the interpretation of the back as a scene of the Tereus saga has no real background. So I couldn't find anywhere that Bizya was the seat of the Tereus. We don't find a figure in the scene that we can name. We don't find any reference to Tereus, Itys or Prokne. On the other hand we find a horse, the shield and the armour in the tree, for which there is no analogy in the legend. Jurukova, Bizye, p.37, sees in the depiction a funerary monument with a funeral feast. But that doesn't explain the armour and the shield! Pick, year. Arch. Inst. XIII, 145, calls it a banquet of a god and a goddess (a theoxenion). Since other editions also show a snake stick, Asklepos and Hygeia are discussed. Varbanov calls the bearded man on the kline Dionysus. I have added the image of a banquet scene on a red and white figure crater. Unfortunately I don't know the name of the artist and the time of production, but the illustration is surprisingly identical with the reverse side of the coin: We find the figures in the same position, we find the servants, the big amphora and even the shields on the wall(!). And under the kline we find a small three-foot table. This tempts us to interpret the so-called tripod under the kline on the coin as a small table! Krater by the so-called C A painter, Campania, Italy, circa 340 B C , national museum, Naples (Thanks to Roman Collector!) In summary, we can only say that we have a banquet scene here, perhaps with a Dionysian background. Unfortunately, that is all! What a pity! History of art: In antiquity, the tereus myth was rarely dealt with (the list comes from www.perseus.tufts.edu): (1) We have a neck amphora of the Dionysus painter with Tereus and Proke, now in Naples. (2) We have the fragment of a Hydria of the Altamura painter with Tereus a bird on the head, as he pursues Prokne, today in Taranto/Italy. (3) We have the fragment of a bowl of the Magnoncourt painter, which shows Prokne and Philomele with Itys, today in Basel. (4) We have a high-class marble statue showing a child leaning on his mother's leg (Prokne and Itys), today in Athens, and (5) a bowl in Paris by Makron, which shows Prokne and Philomele with Itys among others. From these I have added a picture of (5) the Macron bowl (the parts that refer to the myth) and a picture of the Rubens painting 'Tereus' showing Tereus being confronted with the head of his son Itys. Sources: (1) Ovid, Metamorphoses VI, 438-674 (2) Der kleine Pauly (3) Karl Kereny, Die Mythologie der Griechen (4) Benjamin Hederich, Gründliches mythologisches Lexikon (5) Robert von Ranke Graves, Griechische Mythologie (6) Wikipedia (7) www.perseus.tuft.edu Best regards
Very interesting, @Jochen1. I'm struck by the similarity of the reverse of this coin and the painted krater in the National Museum in Naples. I think you are correct in your skepticism about this coin's subject matter. I think the most one can say about the reverse is that it depicts a banquet of some kind. That IS a rare coin. CNG sold one and claimed it was perhaps the third known.
Beautiful coin, Jochen! I agree that "banquet scene" is the best we can do for now, even though there's undoubtedly an interesting story behind it. Thanks for the post. MARCUS AURELIUS AE24. 8.3g, 23.7mm. THRACE, Bizya, circa AD 147-161. Jurukova, Bizye 19; RPC IV.1 Online temp #3903. O: Μ ΑYΡΗΛΙΟϹ ΟYΗΡΟϹ ΚΑΙϹΑΡ, bare head right. R: BIZY-HNΩN, Banquet scene: A male reclining left on couch, extending his right hand to a female sitting before him; small table before couch; to left, small male figure standing right, placing his right hand in an amphora.
