Most Beautiful Ancient Coin?

Alexander's gold staters, such as:

http://www.edgarlowen.com/C001.html

or:

http://www.usask.ca/antiquities/coins/macedonia.html

or:
http://www.cngcoins.com/coin.asp?ITEM_ID=50963

Probably the world's perfect coin.

Michael

 

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Nice!! Remarkable craftmanship for 300 b.c. -- About as good as the hammered coins from the 1500s and 1600s

 

Athenian Owls!

 

You devil you. Why, I agree. Amazing. Amazing coin too. I like Owls as well. Both Alex staters and Owls are considered by most to be more central than beautiful, though like you I disagree with this thinking. Alexander's staters brilliantly, and beautifully, communicated to the world at the time, and the world afterward, what Alexander was all about. Owls in their conservative archaism brilliantly, and beautifully, communicated that this was money and could be relied upon, everywhere. I've got a little page about Alexander III staters:

http://rg.cointalk.org/misc/Alex_staters.html

 

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and to my mind you can't get any more aesthetically pleasing coins than the coinage of Sicily. The city states there (notably Syracuse, Akragas, Leontini, Selinos, and Messana) produced astoundingly beautiful coins. My own favourites are the silver dekadrachms from Syracuse by the artists Euainetos and Kimon (at the very top of my `wish list') such as:

http://www.money.org/h_tml/syracuse.html

http://www.dcatalog.de/nac27/00122H00.HT

http://www.vcoins.com/realms/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=115&large=1

If you really have to have small gold coins, then the double decadrachms /100 litrae such as the following easily compete with the later Alex pieces (IMHO that is) :-

http://www.bio.vu.nl/home/vwielink/WWW_MGC/Area_IV_map/Syracusa_map/descrSyrBasel476k.html

Ian

 

Another sad example of form follows function - stackability of coins has gained such tremendous importance as the use of money has become more widespread among the general populace, that there has been a constant ramping down of relief.

A piece of modern flatware doesn't have a level playing field when trying to compete in a beauty contest against an ultra-high relief ancient.

 

It sure is! This might have escaped peoples notice, but look at it again. As you hover your mouse cursor over the images, you have the option to clck to enlarge specific areas of the coin.

The close up of the dolphin is brilliant, but the horse is something else entirely when itcomes to `detail' .

The detail and sheer artistry on a coin which is some 2,450+ years old is mind boggling, bearing in mind the technology (or lack of) available to them back then.

Ian

 

Unless I am mistaken the last experimentation you left pondians had with `high relief' everyday coinage was the 1921 peace Dollar.

It only took one in the pile to spoil the stackability for cashiers. Just goes to show that if you listen too much to cashiers before you know it life becomes totally mundane. `Flat' as it were....

 

Stipulated. There are coins prettier than the Alexander gold staters. Finding good images of them is not always easy. I went looking for Larissas. The wrestlers of Aspendows, the Ajax coins, heck even Corinthian silver staters, or the same style from their colonies, are all as nice as or nicer than this or that or the other. That would include the "hippocamp" series of Syracuse modeled on the coins of Corinth.

"Most beautiful" is too vague not to be subjective. As stunning as the Syracusans are, do you not find them, well, "busy"? I guess you don't.

Michael

 

Again, stipulated. And thanks for this link. I printed them both out, the Kimon and the Euainetos. The contrast in style is (to pick a word) "gripping." The two printouts go into a folder of ancients materials. This was very informative, edifying even.

Michael

 

Much of this is subjective, of course. Syracusan coins are often considered the most beautiful the world has ever produced. It's so often repeated that the Syracusan deks signed by Euainetos and Kimon are the single most beautiful coin type that it has become a cliche. I also find the obverses of these coins too busy, but I also find Arethusa on the reverse too dour. I like the circling dolphins -- charmingly clever -- but this motif isn't unique to these coins.

I find Larissas among the ugliest coins ever minted, anywhere. Flat nose, fat face, drugged-out eyes, unkempt dirty-looking hair. A real beauty! To each his own, as always. Seltman and perhaps others too believed the Larissa image on these coins was based on the Arethusa image on the Syracusan deks. Sounds about right. <g>

 

The dekadrachms provide sufficient space for the `busyness' IMHO

As you know, they are full of symbolry and detail. The symbolry translates the `story' contained in the coin.

Winged victory presenting the laurels to the charioteer.

Arethusa surrounded by dolphins....

The city of Syracuse triumphs over its Carthaginians foes, and celebrates big time with one of the worlds first commemorative coins


Apart from the Kimon and Euainetos deka's, I think the other Sicilian city states produced more aesthetically pleasing coins (to my eye). However, I would not refuse any in a gift. ;-)

 

You may be right about the `cliche' aspect. It is the impact it has (or doesn't have) on you that counts. For whatever reason, the two artists Kimon and Euainetos hit the mark for me.

In terms of the aesthetics of simplicity, a nice theban stater (shield type) or a high grade Aeginetan`turtle' has an aesthetic appeal all of its own. With both coins ones appreciation of the artistry (or lack of) is not cluttered by any interjecting thoughts concerning female body mass (or parts).

 

We know that someone can be objectively "plain" but come across as "good looking" by virtue of personal charm: how you appear to others depends on how you feel about yourself. I see that in the Athenian Owl. The coin has little to commend it, but it stands on its own, I believe, because it embodies or concretizes the Athenian's view of themselves. The Corinthian silver staters also have this quality. The goddess (Athena or Aphrodite, take your pick) is static, but the Pegasus displays "life" with full curves of motion. Similarly, the Alexander gold staters have a static goddess but a compelliing Nike on the other side. That image, however, comes to us across centuries strewn with cultural baggage: she is a winged Angel bearing a Cross. It is hard to separate chickens and eggs when you think about the imagery and how we perceive it.

On the other hand, the coins of Magna Graecia -- Sicily and Southern Italy -- as a large (and largely unrelated) group display a cultural blossom and flourish that we seem not to appreciate. We have no "great" philosophers or "great" conquerors on whom to pin a cultural identity. (If not for Alexander, the Nikes would be just pretty coins. If not for Themistocles and Pericles and the gang, Owls would be low on the list of must-have coins.) However, the coins the Greek towns in the west -- Neopolis, Leontine, you name it -- tend to be excellent art, compelling, informative, well designed and well struck.

For the collector who wants "an ancient", shopping the agoras of Magna Graecia is a good recommendation.

Michael
"Sicilian"

 

The Athena on Alexander staters changes just as much as the Nike on coins of different cities and periods. Sometimes Athena is masculine looking, sometimes feminine looking. Etc. But I found interesting your comment about Nike being interpreted as a winged angel bearing a cross. Is this something you've just inferred, or do you happen to have any citations of books or journals articles you might share referring to people in the past actually interpreting Nike this way on these coins?

 

Well put.

Ian

 

Okay, I'm very new to the ancients and I looked at all the pictures and read everything there was to read in each of those links and what I find amazing is the richness of the imagery on all of these coins. (Much more so than the Dead Presidents, if I may say so). Each of the coins that I looked at had an inherent beauty of its own and I don't feel can necessarily be compared to each other as better or worse. Each seems to reflect the artistry and meaning of the time and reign that it was produced in - in that respect, I think all of them are beautiful. Just my humble opinion.

 

Spoken like a true collector!

 

Not really my area of interest, but I have always thought the ones with depictions of beasts were very interesting.

This one, for example, which has a Griffon on one side, and a prancing horse on the other:

LINK