Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Jochen1, post: 3332624, member: 103829&quot;]Dear Friends of Greek Mythology!</p><p><br /></p><p>After the article about Darzalas, the Great God of Odessos, it is quite natural to write about the Thracian Rider-God Heros.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>1st coin:</b></p><p>Thracia, Odessos, quasi-autonomous, 270-250 BC</p><p>AE 22, 7.54g, 0°</p><p>obv. Head of Zeus, bearded, laureate, r.</p><p>rev. The Thracian Rider-God Heros, bearded, nude except chlamys, wearing <i>kausia</i>, trotting on horse r., beneath as monogram A; with baseline</p><p>in ex. OΔHCITΩN</p><p>ref. AMNG I/1, 2006; BMC Black Sea 291</p><p>Rare, VF+, brown patina with some earthen highlights</p><p>Pedigree:</p><p>ex David Freedman coll.</p><p>ex CNG auction 61, 25.9.2002, lot 194</p><p>ex William B. Porter coll.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]883068[/ATTACH]</p><p><b>Note:</b></p><p><i>Kausia</i> = A flat bonnet and a typical Macedonian headdress. It served as legitimation of rulership (with reference to Alexander III the Great and his victoriousness), and had only an indirect connection to Macedonia. So its meaning was not national (Eric Janssen, Die Kausia, Diss. Göttingen 20013)</p><p><br /></p><p><b>2nd coin:</b></p><p>Thracia, Odessos, Lucius Verus, AD 161-162</p><p>AE 19, 5.22g, 19.12mm, 225°</p><p>obv. AVT KAI AVP - OVHPOC</p><p>Bust, draped and cuirassed, seen from behind, laureate, r.</p><p>rev. OΔE - CC - E - ITΩN</p><p>The Thracian Rider-God Heros, nude except Chlamys, on horse trotting r., holding</p><p>transverse spear before chest.</p><p>ref. AMNG I/1, 2249; Varbanov 4319 (Emperor!); RPC IV online temp no. 4364</p><p>rare, VF, nice green patina</p><p>[ATTACH=full]883069[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Note:</b></p><p>The horseman is often called Emperor, but alone because of its nudeness it is surely the Rider-God Heros.</p><p><br /></p><p>The Thracians were an old indo-european people or group of peoples in ancient times. They are mentioned already by Homer in his Ilias and described by Herodot. Thracian tribes settled on the Balkans, the actual Thracia, todays Romania, Moldawia, Serbia, Makedonia, Bulgaria, Northern-Greece and between the Carpatian Mountains and the Aegean Sea, and in Asia Minor: Mysia, Bithynia and Paphlagonia. They are the greatest people after the Indians, Herodot wrote. They have had no own scripture, but had close connections to the Greeks and their culture. The ancient religion of the Greeks was strongly influenced by the Thracians. A number of Greek gods actually had Thracian origin, among them Ares, Dionysos, Herakles and Orpheus. Their language was Thracian.</p><p><br /></p><p>Under the Thracian gods particularly interesting was the Heros-God, known as the Thracian Horseman, as he was worshipped by the Thracians, because he was not a specific person like the Greek gods. Although ancestor worship of real people who had done great deeds bled into it, the Thracian Hero was an abstract figure, the idea of a Hero. It is this metaphysical entity (German &#039;<i>Wesenheit</i>&#039;) around which the worship was centered. The Hero was no doubt the central figure in Thracian religion, the hope and faith of the people. Their hero was allseeing and allhearing, he was the sun and also the ruler of the nether world, he was the protector of life and health, and kept the forces of evil at bay. In modern Bulgaria he continues to perform that function going by the name of St.George.</p><p><br /></p><p>The Thracian Hero was depicted all the time, all over the place. Always on a horse, slaying something, slaying anything, usually with a spear. Over 1500 stone reliefs and more than 100 bronze statuettes of the Horseman have been uncovered on the territory of present-day Bulgaria. From antiquity, through Roman times, through the middle ages, and today, the image of the Horseman is inescapable in Bulgaria.</p><p><br /></p><p>The Thracian Hero is also responsible for the Greek word <i>Heros</i> from which the English word &#039;hero<b>&#039; </b>is derived. The ethymological origin is indo-european *<i>ser</i>- = to protect (Webster),</p><p><br /></p><p>This hero-god was a war-god, he was the son of Bendis, the Great Mother of Gods, and her lover too. Bendis was worshipped as goddess of hunting and fertility. Her son was born virginally. Another important aspect of the Thracian religion was the belief in Immortality, known already from the 6th century BC or even earlier. Because of that the Christianism was accepted in Thracia very early. The religious components like mother, son, immaculate conception and Lord&#039;s Supper had an old tradition in Thracia. I remind on the letters of St.Paul to the Thessalonians written AD 51.</p><p><br /></p><p>He was worshipped at hundreds of sanctuaries, peasants are still making pilgrimages to one of Bulgaria’s main Thracian Horseman sanctuaries, in fact that is how a lot of Thracian archeological sites in Bulgaria have been found. Archeologists just followed the local people to the places where they performed their &quot;Christian&quot; rituals, in fact the rituals and celebrations were (like St. Trifon) Christian only by name. In most cases the peasants didn’t even know that the places they went to were ex-Thracian altar&nbsp; sites, they had simply been going there since time in memorial, only after the archeologists dug the site, did the people see the Thracian altars. 1000 years earlier the Church had done a very good job of burying &quot;pagan&quot; alters, and erasing the &quot;pagan&quot; names, but it couldn’t change, or eliminate the culture and rituals. Today St. George is the Hero’s new name. You can see images of St. George on a horse, slaying a dragon, all over Bulgaria.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>The Madara Horseman</b>:</p><p>We must mention here the <i>Madara Horseman</i> too. This is a large rock relief from the early medieval times near the village of Madara in northeastern Bulgaria. The relief depicts a majestic horseman 23 m above ground level in an almost vertical 100-metre-high cliff. The horseman, facing right, is thrusting a spear into a lion lying at his horse’s feet. An eagle is flying in front of the horseman and a dog is running after him. The scene symbolically depicts a military triumph. The monument is dated back to circa 710 AD and is allocated to the Proto-Bulgarians who settled in this region. Other theories connect the relief with the ancient Thracians, claiming it portrays the Thracian Rider-God.</p><p><br /></p><p>Besides the two coins which have been struck in a temporal distance of 400 years I want to show 2 pictures:</p><p><br /></p><p>(1) an altar of the Thracian Horseman and then</p><p>[ATTACH=full]883070[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>(2) too the monumental relief of the Madara Horseman. Since 1979 it belongs to the World Heritage of the UNESCO</p><p>[ATTACH=full]883071[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Sources:</b></p><p>(1) Wikipedia</p><p>(2) <a href="http://ancient-bulgaria.com/category/nature/reliefs/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://ancient-bulgaria.com/category/nature/reliefs/" rel="nofollow">http://ancient-bulgaria.com/category/nature/reliefs/</a></p><p><br /></p><p>Best regards[/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