Dear Friends, I've just posted a charity auction on eBay that offers a neat coin and a copy of KOINON, a new journal of classical numismatics recently published. eBay link: https://www.ebay.com/itm/CILICIA-Ta...Charity-auction-Coin-And-Journal/292830366098 See the description below: Thanks for visiting my e-Bay charity auction, which I’m hosting on behalf of my wife, Kate Molinari, who is running the 2019 Boston Marathon, and her patient partner, Bennett Barclay, an awesome little guy that has been battling a brain tumor—and will be victorious! Kate has pledged $13,000 for Boston Children’s Hospital and this auction’s proceeds will go directly to that fund (I will cover all eBay fees and US Shipping). Anyone who knows me knows I’m very fond of Acheloios, a deity equated with water and represented in Greek and Etruscan art in the form of a man-faced bull. What many people do not know is that Acheloios is a protector of children, both physically as an apotropaic deity and more generally, as a deity associated with personal development and civic identity (so-called koureion rituals). Indeed, on a Classical relief dating to the late 5th century (the Xenokrateia Relief), the words “ta didaskalia,” meaning roughly “the upbringing,” is mentioned in a request from a mother in reference to her child. In other words, she requests of all the gods depicted on the relief, including the prominently featured Acheloios, that they protect and help nurture (ta didaskalia) her child throughout life. There are other cases that exhibit Acheloios in this role, even Acheloios-shaped guttii that served milk to infants in the Etruscan world! And the same goes for the earlier Near Eastern predecessors of the Acheloios tradition, many of whom performed a similar function, featured in lullabies and in one case as a grave good for a child. Most importantly, in the story of the Trachiniae, Zeus uses Acheloios as the catalyst in his own son’s apotheosis, which my recent essay discusses at length. It is therefore fitting to present in this fundraiser a coin featuring Herakles’ pyre, which depicts him standing atop Acheloios in the moment of deification. In terms of specifics, this benefit auction is for a plate coin from my article and a copy of the new journal, KOINON, which features that article. The coin is from Tarsos, in Cilicia, and is about 2200 years old. All proceeds will go to the most appropriate of places—The Boston Children’s Hospital, where everyday parents ask the gods to protect their children, much like Xenokrateia did for her son some 2,400 years ago! The journal retails for about $50 shipped, and I paid just under $100 for the coin, because this particular variety is quite scarce (and I’m a little obsessed with man-faced bull iconography, to be honest). The opening bid, however, is a mere $1.00! Shipping just $0.01! International shipping is, unfortunately, much higher, at $35.00. If you can’t bid but still want to contribute to this worthy cause, please visit Kate’s page, here: https://secure.childrenshospital.or...&NONCE_TOKEN=37BBCB9B9D46C18137B3118BC409486E
