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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Orielensis, post: 3138144, member: 96898&quot;]I’m glad you found my post helpful, Clavdivs. And thanks to everyone for the nice and welcoming words!</p><p><br /></p><p>To complement your coin, I am posting my specimens of the two other types from Gryneion:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]801706[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]801707[/ATTACH]</p><p>The coins on the left and in the middle are the most common type with Apollo facing on the obverse and a mussel shell with the legend GURNH or similar on the reverse (BMC 3–5, SNG Copenhagen 206–6; SNG von Aulock 1619). It would be possible to distinguish several varieties based on the size and shape of the shell and the position (or existence) of the letters. Yet, I don’t think that this is normally done, and also wonder whether it would be useful at all. The coin on the right is the third type, showing on the obverse the head of Apollo right on the obverse, and on the reverse a mussel shell and a club below (not in BMC, SNG Copenhagen 207, SNG von Aulock 1620). Together with Clavdivs’ coin, this is, as far as I know, a complete set of all known coin types from Gryneion!</p><p><br /></p><p>All of these often survive in a rather battered condition, which might partly be due to the facing portrait being particularly susceptible to wear. Yet, they are among the Greek bronzes that I particularly love due to their historical background, literary significance, and the open questions they raise. Below is a little write-up for those who might be interested:</p><p><br /></p><p>Gryneion, a port town in Asia Minor located about 20 miles from Pergamon, is mentioned in Herodotus <i>Histories </i>(1.149.1) as one of the twelve great cities of Aeolis. After the battle of Salamis in 480 BC, the Persian king Xerxes gave Gryneion to an ally, the Greek aristocrat Gongylos of Eretria. Gongylos’ heirs might have still held the town in the late 5th c. BC, yet Gryneion was at that time also a tribute-paying member of the anti-Persian Delian League – the political situation in Aeolis was muddled and apparently resulted in some degree of autonomy for the city, as is indicated by the epicraphic use of the word <i>polis</i> for Gryneion. In 336/5 BC, in the context of the unsuccessful Macedonian invasion of Asia Minor, Parmenion sacked the he town and sold its inhabitants into slavery. Gryneion was rebuilt afterwards, and in the Hellenistic period belonged to the territory of the Pergamene Attalids. It was politically merged with the neighboring Myrina before the region was annexed by Rome in 129 BC. (On this note, it is interesting that Clavdivs also has a coin of Myrina in his lot: the one next to the Gryneian coin, showing the head of Apollo and an amphora with a lyra to the right, is from Myrina, BMC 27–31, SNG Copenhagen 225, SNG von Aulock 1666.)</p><p><br /></p><p>The Gryneian coins are tentatively dated to the 4th or 3rd century BC, and to my knowledge it is not fully clear whether they were minted before or after the Macedonian invasion. In any case, they visually refer to two important factors of the city’s economy and culture. First, the fishing port of Gryneion was famous for its mussels, depicted on the reverse. In fact, its mussel banks are even mentioned by Pliny the Elder in his <i>Natural History </i>(lib. 32, cap. 21).</p><p><br /></p><p>Secondly, there was a sanctuary of Apollo and oracle at Gryneion, which arguably served as the cultic center of Aeolis. The head Apollo on the obverse of all coins almost certainly is a reference to this religious site and its deity, which features prominently in a key passage of Vergil’s <i>Aeneid</i>. When Aeneas decides to leave Dido and go to Italy, he declares in his farewell speech: <i>sed nunc Italiam magnam Gryneus Apollo, Italiam Lyciae iussere capessere sortes; hic amor, haec patria est! </i>(“But now Grynean Apollo, the oracle of Lycia, bids me to seek Italy, great Italy; there is my love, there is my nation!”). So, if you always wanted to see a coin depicting the deity of the prophetic seat which according to Vergil caused the founding of Rome and triggered the Punic Wars, here are some!</p><p><br /></p><p>There are some additional things I like about these coins: Gryneion never minted any silver, and the question is why. An educated guess I read about recently is that the Gryneians did a bit of outsourcing and used the silver coinage of bigger neighboring cities while only producing small copper change for local use themselves. Secondly, it’s not fully clear whether the three coin types were minted at different times or are different denominations. I suspect the latter due to their weight, but that is just me guessing. Finally, careful readers of Greek legends will notice that the coins give the name of the city as “Gyrneion” although it is always referred to as “Gryneion” in modern literature – this is a wonderful instance of a linguistic phenomenon called metathesis which causes sounds in a word to change place over time, so that the word might be pronounced more easily. Likely the city’s name was Gyrneion when the coins were minted, but had slowly morphed into Gryneion (or, in Latin, Grynium) by the time of Pliny the Elder. Fascinating, isn’t it?![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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