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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;FrizzyAntoine, post: 8119183, member: 114961&quot;]Okay, we’re most of the way through December and what a year it’s been! Replete with a great many non-numismatic ups and downs, this year has somehow nonetheless managed to be quite satisfying from a numismatic perspective, and better than I had anticipated given how hard this list was to narrow down and arrange in order. This is my 2nd list of the year, focussing only on Greek coinage, which is my primary area of interest. I hope the videos help make up for the short descriptions, though they aren’t quite where I’d like them to be either, and the coming year may bring with it a much-needed upgrade to my photography equipment. Anyways, without further ado, here they are.</p><p><br /></p><p>10. Herakleia Nomos</p><p><br /></p><p>[MEDIA=youtube]f30nMR-PzRg[/MEDIA]</p><p><br /></p><p>This coin was minted in the Magna Graecian polis of Herakleia, at a time when&nbsp; the Greek colonists of the region were facing increased pressures from the southern expansion of local Italian peoples, chief among them the early Roman state. This call would be answered by a number of different monarchs and city-states, most importantly by Pyrrhos of Epirus, whose campaigns in southern Italy and Sicily have passed on almost into legend. In 280 BCE the fields near Herakleia would be the starting-point of this grand and ultimately ruinous Italian campaign. Athena is depicted on the obverse in traditional Magna Graecian fashion, though this example has a more complete bust than most, at the expense of a reduced plume on the helmet. The reverse meanwhile depicts the aftermath of Herakles’ duel with the Nemean Lion, showing the hero holding the hide of his vanquished foe as a trophy, and sporting his fearsome club and bow, while Nike adorns him with a crown in celebration of his conquest.</p><p><br /></p><p>9. Philippi Hemidrachm</p><p><br /></p><p>[MEDIA=youtube]mIJJc63qEjs[/MEDIA]</p><p><br /></p><p>This is a coin I can still hardly believe I actually own. Part of the reason for their immense rarity is that these were minted for only a short while as a celebratory issue, following the renaming of the town of Krenides, host to the bountiful Pangean Mines – a massive series of silver and gold veins so richly bursting with ore that they were the basis for Philip of Macedon’s introduction of the first stable bimetallic currency system in Greece. Capturing the newly-founded town and its untapped ore was one of his first strategic conquests after ascending the Macedonian throne, and proved to be a masterstroke. In 356 BCE he renamed the town <i>Philippi</i>, and a series of hemidrachms and tetradrachms (perhaps other denominations in silver as well, of these I am as yet unaware) and gold staters were struck to commemorate the event. These coins also interestingly feature a beardless Herakles wearing the Nemean lionskin, a hallmark of the coinage of his son Alexander and a motif rarely seen before Alexanders own coinage. On the reverse is a tripod, with a grain ear to the right and the legend ΦΙΛΙΠΠΩΝ to the left.</p><p><br /></p><p>8. Achaemenid Type IV Siglos</p><p><br /></p><p>[MEDIA=youtube]urVpBYdgYiA[/MEDIA]</p><p><br /></p><p>This coin has twofold historical value. It is a remarkably complete and detailed example of one of the earliest, most widespread, and most iconic coin designs of the ancient world. And it marks the final issue of coins to be struck in that series, heralding with it the death of the first truly transcontinental empire in history. These ‘Late Phase’ Type IV siglos were stuck sometime during the reigns of Artaxerxes III and Darius III, however they maintained, in very slightly-altered form, a design which had been in use since the days of Darius I nearly two centuries prior.</p><p><br /></p><p>7. Athens Drachm (Starr II.C)</p><p><br /></p><p>[MEDIA=youtube]swJhofGF6qo[/MEDIA]</p><p><br /></p><p>Like a number of other coins on this list, this is a difficult coin to get hold of, especially so when one fails to be born a member of the landed gentry. Despite the massive abundance of tetradrachms from Athens, the smaller denominations are annoyingly scarce, moreso when one looks for anything made before Athens commandeered the Delian League treasury in 454 BCE. This is a drachm of Athens, belonging to Starr Group II.C and struck sometime in the immediate aftermath of the Persian Wars, between 475 and 465 BCE. At that time Athens was being reborn from the desolation left in the wake of the Achaemenid sack of 480 BCE. The obverse features a characteristically enchanting archaic head of Athena struck in high relief, meanwhile the reverse as ever depicts her faithful owl, facing forwards with the city ethnic at his right side. Interestingly, some coins of this series do depict a crescent moon next to the olive sprig to the left of the owl while others don’t, which is generally regarded to be a reference to the Athenian victory at Marathon. I believe it is missing from my example, however the poor state of preservation of the reverse could simply be hindering my ability to locate it.</p><p><br /></p><p>6. Teos Stater</p><p><br /></p><p>[MEDIA=youtube]9XYPO1cYUvc[/MEDIA]</p><p><br /></p><p>Alright, finally a coin with some real heft to it! There isn’t a great deal I can say about this coin at the moment as it’s quite newly-arrived and unresearched on my part, and so I will have to leave you with a basic first impression – the mythical motif of the griffin on the obverse, while relatively common among early classical and archaic coinage, is nonetheless a real standout on this piece with a realistic and ferociously carved creature presented to us, jaws agape. With such as strong showing on the obverse the good people of Teos (of which the correct spelling may in fact be Theos) clearly felt there was no need to put anything on the reverse, so it features a shallow quadripartite incuse in typical fashion for coins minted in the Aegean around the turn of the 6th Century BCE.</p><p><br /></p><p>The rest of the list is below, apparently 5 embedded videos is the max per post!! <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie12" alt="o_O" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /><img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie20" alt=":banghead:" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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