Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;DonnaML, post: 4616575, member: 110350&quot;]Ordinarily I might agree with you, but not in this case.&nbsp; The problem with your argument is that there&#039;s really nothing the animal on my coin could be other than a leopard: there are only five kinds of &quot;big cats,&quot; and the same five are the only members of the genus Panthera: lions, tigers, leopards (including the black panther, which in the Greek and Roman context was simply a black leopard), snow leopards, and jaguars.&nbsp;&nbsp; (Traditionally, there are actually only four &quot;big cats&quot; -- lion, tiger, leopard, and jaguar -- because they&#039;re the only four cats able to roar. Snow leopards cannot.)</p><p><br /></p><p>The animal on my coin isn&#039;t a lion. (Yes, it could theoretically be a lioness, but I&#039;ve never seen a portrayal of a big cat covered with spots that anyone even tried to identify as a lioness, or with respect to which a claim was made that the spots simply represented &quot;shaggy fur.&quot;&nbsp; Have you ever seen a wolf portrayed with spots to represent shaggy fur?&nbsp; I don&#039;t think so. The celators knew how to portray fur when they wanted to.)</p><p><br /></p><p>It isn&#039;t a tiger, either.&nbsp; The Greeks and Romans didn&#039;t know about jaguars, and I doubt they knew about snow leopards.&nbsp; That leaves leopards, with they were very familiar.&nbsp; (The Beazley archive pottery database at Oxford has more than 350 examples of classical pottery showing leopards, i.e., spotted big cats., a number of them with Dionysos.&nbsp; There are more than 1,300 examples in the database showing &quot;panthers,&quot; and the vast majority seem to be of black-colored panthers -- also leopards, in fact.)</p><p><br /></p><p>And then there are all the vases, mosaics, frescoes, etc. -- a couple of them posted on this thread -- specifically showing and associating Dionysos with big cats that clearly appear to be leopards.&nbsp; Just like on my coin.&nbsp; Not a coincidence, I think.&nbsp; To me, it&#039;s even harder for paintings than for coins to argue that those renditions of spotted big cats are anything other than leopards, or that the spots somehow represent something else.&nbsp; The resemblance to actual leopards is too close, except perhaps in the fact that they&#039;re sometimes larger than life, as other animal portrayals can be in classical art.&nbsp; I think the specific association of leopards with Dionysos in visual art&nbsp; -- especially when taken together with the many portrayals in classical art of satyrs and maenads wearing leopard-skins in performing their rites -- is the only further proof necessary that a large cat covered with spots, shown on the same coin as Dionysos and carrying his traditional thyrsos, is, in fact, a leopard and not just some vague, unidentified, &quot;panther.&quot;[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in