Featured Ajax the Lesser and the Lokrian Maidens

Hey all, these past few weeks have been been unusually busy for me and I've been driven into veritable lurking mode here on CT. Even though my coin activity in general has been close to zero (which is good since my budget is well into negative territory!), I wanted to share this recent arrival from an auction win back in March.

I've admired these Lokrian staters ever since I started collecting Greek coins and they've always been right at the top of my want list. This example has a really beautiful, high-relief head of Demeter, but it was probably the intricate decorative details on the inside of Ajax's shield on the reverse that really sold me on it. I wish my pictures were better, because it is truly gorgeous in hand .

As always, please share 'em if you've got 'em!


LOKRIS, Lokri Opuntii
AR Stater. 12.09g, 24.9mm. LOKRIS, Opous, circa 350-340 BC. BCD Lokris-Phokis 60; McClean 5433; HGC 4, 992 var (control). O: Head of Demeter left, wreathed with grain. R: OΠONTIΩN, Ajax advancing right, brandishing sword and holding shield decorated with griffin and palmette; spear on ground behind, Λ between legs.
Ex CNG 63 (21 May 2003), lot 313

The Lokri Opuntii were a tribe of Greeks who inhabited a small area of coastal lands near Thermopylae. During the Greco-Persian Wars, they sent all their fighting men to join the small Greek army led by King Leonidas of Sparta at the Battle of Thermopylae. Just before Leonidas's last stand with his Spartan hoplites against Xerxes's massed armies, the surviving Opuntii were amongst those sent back to defend their homelands against the impending Persian invasion.

The reverse of Lokrian staters depict their legendary hero, Ajax the Lesser, son of King Oileus, who according to the Iliad brought forty ships to the siege of Troy. During the sack of the city, Ajax desecrated the temple of Athena by abducting the princess Kassandra and raping her within its sanctuary. On his sea voyage home, an outraged Athena summoned a storm that wrecked his fleet and destroyed his ship with a bolt of lightning. When Ajax clung on to a rock and boasted that had survived even the best efforts of the gods, Poseidon broke the rock apart and caused him to drown.

The wrath of Athena was not sated with Ajax's death, and she subsequently sent a plague to scourge the lands of the Lokrians. To atone for the great sacrilege of Ajax, the Lokrians were instructed by the Oracle of Delphi to send two maidens to Troy to serve as slaves at the temple of Athena Ilias each year for a thousand years. The maidens, however, would only enjoy this 'privilege' if they managed to reach the temple alive, for the Trojans kept watch for their arrival and would proceed to hunt them down and kill them if they could.

The historian Timaios and the poet Kallimachos were amongst those who wrote of the tradition of the Lokrian Maidens, and as late as the 3rd century BC, it was recorded that Antigonos Gonatas was asked by the Lokrians to decide from which of their cities the tribute maidens should be chosen. Despite this millennia-long onus placed upon them by their ancestor, the Lokrians continued to venerate Ajax, placing him on their coinage and celebrating his feats at the Aianteia, a competitive festival they held at Opus.


Ajax and Cassandra, by Solomon J. Solomon (1886)

 

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Beautiful coin

 

That certainly is one great looking coin zumbly, Ajaxe's abs and a strategically placed sword are beautifully detailed, the whole coin is just fantastic.

 

Outstanding coin, Z! Wonderful writeup too

I have no relevant coins to share

 

An interesting bit of musical trivia about Lokris:

Greek music was based on modes, sort of like the scales we use today but without sharps or flats. If you play a C Major scale on a piano, you go from one C note to the next one, playing just the white keys. But if you start on any other scale note and go to its partner an octave away playing only the white keys in between, you are playing a mode. This is more or less the structure on which music was based in ancient Greece (although the tuning was slightly different).

If you play from D to D, using only white keys, you are playing a Dorian mode. That is, if you start your song on a D and it resolves to a D at the end, (even though you are changing the order of the other notes), your song is in Dorian mode. E to E is Phrygian mode. F to F is Lydian, G to G, mixolydian, A to A, Aeolian, and--wait for it--B to B, Lokrian (a.k.a. Locrian).

Each mode generates its own distinct mood, and so the songs in a specific mode all tended to be about similar topics or ideas. The problem is that in Lokrian mode weird things happen. There's no perfect fifth from your starting point, and the resolution is very unsettling. If you play the notes B, C, D, E, F, G, A, B on any instrument (no accidentals) you hear how weird it sounds. When you come to that final B, it feels like you need to keep going, like you've just left us hanging by stopping there; the song never properly resolves.

And for this reason, there were periods in Greek history when playing a song in Lokrian mode was a crime, punishable by death!

 

Wow, I didn't know that! Thanks for the simple explanation of modal scales

Now I need to hear that Lokrian mode. Hope I don't die

 

Don't let the discussion of chords intimidate you; you can get a good idea of how the mode "feels" in this short video:

 

Fascinating!

 

Lovely coin, @zumbly ! And interesting info on the Lokrian mode, @gsimonel .

 

A beautiful coin, congrats!

 

A very nice coin and an interesting write up. Don't mess with Athena, wow, 1000 years of punishment.

I have one of these I got way back in 2001 when I started a new job. Mine has the three headed dog fancier and daughter of Demeter: Persephone. How they know this coin has Persephone, I don't know.

I always liked the stylistic tie-in with the coins of Syracuse. It has been suggested that the Lokrians, returning from service as mercenaries in Sicily, may have brought with them a quantity of Syracusan coins, which would have provided bullion and the prototype for the 'Euainetan' head adopted at Lokris. (Not sure where I found that statement).



Lokris Opuntia.
AR Stater, 369-338 BC, 12.19g.
Obverse: Wreathed head of Persephone of Euainetos type right, wearing single-pendant earring and a necklace; thin band in hair behind her ear.
Reverse: OPONTIWN, Ajax advancing right, nude but for crested helmet, brandishing sword and shield, shield decorated with griffin and a palmette, broken spear at his feet diagonally.
References: SNG Copenhagen 42 (same dies).

John

 

..it wasn't illegal to listen, only to play

 

But I had to play it on an internet piano! [anxiously looking around for the hit squad]

 

Wow, that’s a beauty! The identity of the portrait seems like a toss up between Demeter and Persephone, but definitely inspired by the Syracusan Arethusa. For the most part I think the Lokrian diecutters did a fantastic job.

 

WOW, well done. Just gorgeous!

 

For any one who would like to research these coins numismatically, like find out their pedigree, how many exist from the same die pair etc. etc., there is the definitive die study published 1n 2014, The Coinage of the Opuntian Lokrians, by Jacqueline Morineau Humphris and Diana Delbridge. It is a Royal Numismatic Society Special Publiccation No. 50 and probably available from Spink in London among other places.

 

Thanks for that info! I found a review of the book on CoinsWeekly and will be placing it on my reference want list.

 

What a pretty coin Z!

Man, this is close as I can get....Ajax the Power Cleanser and the Iron Maiden.

 

Super coin Z!!!!!!!

 

I've been a bit of a lurker lately also and my coin buying is way down. What a way to come out swinging! Man that is a beautiful coin!

I have nothing similar to share...except for a couple from my collection:


Thessaly, Larissa
AR Drachm, 6.0g, 20mm, 12h; c. 380-365 BC.
Obv.: Head of the nymph Larissa facing slightly right, wearing ampyx, earring, and necklace.
Rev.: [ΛAPI]-ΣAIΩN, horse grazing right.


PAMPHYLIA, Aspendos.
AR Stater, 22mm, 10.78g, 12h; c. 380/75-330/25 BC.
Obv.: Two wrestlers grappling; ΦK between, below
Rev.: Slinger in throwing stance right; EΣTFEΔIIYΣ to left, counterclockwise triskeles of legs to right; lion countermark in lower right field.