Dear friends of ancient mythology! The turtle is known as the characteristic image on the ancient coins of Aigina/Attica. But there are also others. For example, the following: Coin #1: Cilicia, Mallos, 440-380 BC. AR - Obol, 0.73g Obv.: turtle from above Rev.: androkephalic bull protome n. l. in square incus Ref.: not listed in the standard works Obv.: cf. SNG Levant 186 Rev.: cf. SNG Ashmolean 1735; cf. Rauch 96, 2014, lot 107; CNG e-Sale 380, 2016, lot 72 Very rare, VF, some horn silver plating. Mythology: Chelone was a nymph who lived on the banks of a river at Mount Chelydorea in Arcadia in southern Greece. For his wedding with Hera, Zeus had Hermes invite all the gods, men and animals. All accepted this invitation except Chelone, who scoffed at the wedding. When Hermes noticed this, he went back to earth and threw her together with her house into the river, thus transforming her into a turtle that had to carry her shell on its back. Because of her mockery she was condemned to eternal muteness (Servius, Commentary on Virgil, Aeneid). The turtle was a symbol of silence in Greece. Aesop knows more details in his fables: Zeus did not know why she was not present and asked Chelone the reason. She replied: "Be it ever so humble, there is no place like one's home". Meanwhile feminists have also taken up this issue. Their explanation: Chelone saw through the fact that this marriage was meant to serve the patriarchal purpose of the mainland Greeks, and that it was meant to severely curtail the rights and importance of the all-embracing and ancient mother goddess Hera. Well, well. Hermes invents the lyre Chelydorea was the name in ancient times for a 1759m high mountain range in Arcadia and in the Achaean Pellene, a part of the Kyllene mountain range that advanced to the north. The name means "de-shelter of the turtle". It was known for its abundance of tortoises (Pausanias). On it, the legend has Hermes inventing the lyre. Hermes was born of Maja, who had been seduced by Jupiter, in a cave in the Kyllene Mountains. Already on the day of his birth he stole the tools of several gods, even Zeus' sceptre. He sneaked out of the cradle and drove away the cattle Apollo was tending. So that they would not make any noise, he put shoes on them. He slaughtered and ate two of them. On the way back to Kyllene he found a turtle, cleaned its shell and stretched the sinews of the slaughtered cattle over it as strings. Apollo searched for his cattle and learned that Hermes had been the thief. When Hermes, supported by Maja, denied the crime, Apollo brought him before Zeus, where he admitted nothing. Zeus then returned the cattle to Apollo. When Apollo heard Hermes play the lyre he had just invented, he liked it so much that he gave him his cattle in exchange for the lyre. Later Apollo gave the lyre to his son Orpheus. In Hellenism, the lyre was a symbol of poets and thinkers, from which the term lyricism later developed. An ancient riddle read: κριον εχω γενεθρα, τεκεν δε με τωδε γελωνη; τικτομενη δ'αμφω πεφνον ερνους γονεας. Father to me is the ram, the tortoise is my mother, but at birth I gave death to both. Answer: Of course this is Lyra, also called Chelys in Greek, which is poet. the turtle; It is also the lyre made from the shell of the turtle. Its arms were often made of rams' horns. It is often difficult to distinguish from the cithara, but the latter, unlike the lyre, has a foot. Coin #2 Syria, Antiochia ad Orontem, pseudo-autonomous, 54-68 (time of Nero). AE 16, 4.55g, 0° struck 59/60 (year 108 of the Caesarian era) Obv.: Head of Apollo, wearing diadem and necklace, r., in pearl circle Rev.: ANTIOXE - ET HP (year 108) Chelys Ref.: BMC 88; RPC 4293; SNG Copenhagen 108; SNG Munich 679; SNG Righetti 1899 VF+, sand encrustations on black patina We have seen that Hermes is closely associated with the tortoise. Therefore, it is no wonder that he is often depicted together with her. A famous statue of Lysipp (around 330 BC) is the so-called "sandal-binder", a copy of which was found in the Villa Adriana in Tivoli. In the meantime, thanks to von Mosch, we know that it is not a "sandal-binder" but a "sandal-solver". He is depicted on large bronzes from Markianopolis. Coin #3: Moesia inferior, Markianopolis, Philip II as Caesar & Serapis, 244-247. AE 27, 13.94g, 26.96mm, 30° struck under governor Prastina Messalinus Obv.: M I[OVΛIOC] ΦIΛIΠΠOC KAI / CAP AVΓ Facing busts of Philip II, draped and cuirassed, r., and Serapis, draped, with kalathos, l. Rev.: VΠ ΠPACT MECCAΛEI[NOV MAPK]IANOΠOΛITΩN Hermes, nude, standing left bent forward and facing front, the r. foot placed on a ram's head, the left arm covered with the chlamys resting on the right knee; on the ground between his feet a turtle. l., behind him a tree stump with a kerykeion before and a second indistinct object in the left field E (for Pentassarion) Ref.: a) AMNG I/1, 1209, pl. XVI, 25 (2 ex., Philippopel, Sophia Tacchella revue num. 1893, 73, 23) b) Varbanov 2107 c) Hristova/Jekov (2014) No. 6.44.10.3. rare, almost VF, shiny, dark green patina. Pedigree: ex CNG electronic auction 215, lot 390 ex coll. J.P.Righetti, No. 10008 In the statue of Lysipp, the ram's head and the turtle are not present. Here the artist has thankfully added both! The tortoise in the military: The Greek chelone was a siege engine with a roof on top for protection against shelling. It was also used by the Romans. The best known, however, is the Roman turtle formation (Latin testudo = "tortoise"), which was developed during the time of Gaius Iulius Caesar. It consisted of a square formation of soldiers with angular shields (scutum). The first row held their shields forward, the following ones high above their heads so that they overlapped. This allowed the formation to move forward even under heavy fire, but only slowly because it was very cumbersome. The testudo could only be exercised by carefully trained soldiers and, above all, had to be broken up again in good time; otherwise it would have become a helpless victim of the enemy in close combat. The picture is from Trajan's Column. Wikipedia (Cristian Chirita) The Death of Aischylos An unfortunate role was played by a tortoise in the death of Aischylos in 456 BC, according to Valerius Maximus. Aischylos (525 - 456 BC) was the oldest of the great Greek tragedian poets. Unfortunately, most of his works have been lost. But his last ones (e.g. "The Eumenides") are dramas of world literature hardly surpassed in their tragedy and depth of thought. Because he had been prophesied to die by falling objects, he stayed in the fields near Gela on his last trip to Sicily. There he was killed by a tortoise dropped by an eagle. The bird had mistaken Aischylos' head for a rock and used it to break open the tortoise's shell. Sources: (1) Pausanias, Travels in Greece. (2) Aesop, Fables (3) Pliny, Naturalis Historia Literature: (1) Benjamin Hederich, Gründliches mythologisches Lexikon, Leipzig 1770. (2) Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher, Extensive Lexicon of Greek and Roman Mythology (3) Hristova/Jekov, Marcianopolis (2014). (4 Christian von Mosch, The Hermes of Lysipp(?) on the coins of Trapezous, Amastris and Marcianopolis, in Jahrbuch für Numismatik und Geldgeschichte 63, 2013. (5) K. Ohlert, Rätsel und Rätselspiele der alten Griechen, Berlin 1912. (6) Gemoll, Griechisch-Deutsches Schul- und Handwörterbuch, 1954 (7) The Kleiner Pauly (8) theoi.com (9) Wikipedia Excursus: The race between Achilles and the tortoise Probably the best-known paradoxon from antiquity is the race between Achilles and the tortoise, known as "Achilles". This paradoxon originates from Zeno of Elea (ca. 490 - ca. 430 BC), the founder of dialectics, and has been handed down to us by Aristotle in his "Physics". Achilles was known as the fastest runner in antiquity. When he entered a race with the tortoise, he gave the tortoise a fair head start. He should not have done so, for Zenon could prove that he could then never catch up with the tortoise, let alone overtake it. For if he wanted to overtake the tortoise, he would first have to reach the place where the tortoise had been before. But every time Achilles reached the tortoise's place, the tortoise had crawled a little further. Although the turtle's lead became smaller and smaller, it always remained. This obviously contradicts our observation. But where is the error in Zeno's chain of evidence? Now you can read in any better mathematics book how to calculate when and where Achill will catch up with the turtle with the help of series expansions or limit value considerations. But that misses the real problem. It is about logic! What is wrong with the logic that Achilles must always - and I mean always - first reach the point where the tortoise was before? This raises the question of whether space is infinitely divisible. In logic as a thought experiment it is, but not in reality. There is Planck's constant, which sets limits to reality. And this shows that this paradoxon is not located in reality, but in mental space. And that is why it must be solved there. In recent times, a number of philosophers have dealt with the "Achilles" and have achieved astonishing results. The British philosopher James Thomson (1921-1984) developed the theory of "supertasks" in 1954. For this purpose, he invented various "machines", which are of course only thought experiments. One of them is "Thomson's lamp": A burning lamp is switched off after a time t, then switched on again after a time t/2, switched off again after t/4 and immediately. We know that mathematically the lamp enters its final state after a finite time. (see "Achilles"). But we do not know what state it is in then. Another thought led to the "Pi machine". A thought machine calculates the infinite number of decimal places of pi one after the other. In the process, it needs only half as much time for each additional digit as for the digit before it. We know that mathematically this machine must stop after a finite time. The paradox then consists in the last digit of pi, which mathematically cannot exist. That is quite exciting! The French-American philosopher Paul Benacerraf refuted Thomson's considerations in 1962, which led to new interest in infinity-related problems. In the meantime, it has turned out that this problem is not only philosophical, but also plays a role in the real world. This was demonstrated in 1994 by measurements at the Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, which confirmed this paradox for measurements in the quantum world: the motion of a quantum system was shown to be brought to a standstill by a sequence of dense measurements alone, which led to the theoretical modelling of the quantum Zeno effect (Wikipedia) Zeno's paradoxes challenged our notion of motion, time and space; the path to an answer was full of surprises. The picture is taken from "Meinstein, school subjects simply explained". Sources: (1) Hermann Diels, The Fragments of the Presocratics, Rowohlts Klassiker 1957. (2) The Presocratics, edited by Wilhelm Capelle, Kröner 1968. Literature: (1) Adolf Grünbaum, Modern Science and Zeno's Paradoxes of Motion, in "Zeno's Paradoxes", edited by Wesley C. Salmon, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. (2) William I. Laughlin, A Solution to Zeno's Paradoxes, Spektrum der Wissenschaft, January 1995. (3) Nick Huggett, Zeno's Paradoxes, 2004, in "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy". (4) Wikipedia Best regards
Another great write up! The image of the title formation on Trajan's column is amazing Here are some more little shelled friends to add to the party: Lesbos, Methymna, Hemiobol, ca. 350-240 BC; AR (g 0,31; mm 7; h 9); Facing head of Silenos, Rv. Tortoise within incuse circle. Franke -. HGC 6, 900-901. SNG Copenhagen -. SNG von Aulock -. Aegina, Aegina Obol circa 520, AR 0.94 g. 8mm. Sea turtle seen from above, with thin collar and dots running down the back. Rev. Large skew pattern incuse. SNG Lockett 1977 Ex: Savoca
Thank you for the informative and interesting write-up, @Jochen1 As always, well done! No silver turtles in my collection, but I have a couple of tortoise-shell lyres. This one is a mystery - I thought I'd be able to attribute it, but I've never been able to figure it out (any help greatly appreciated) - Hermes and chelys: Unknown Greek Æ 11 (c. ?) Head of Hermes right, wearing petasos, winged kerykeion (caduceus) over shoulder / Greek inscription? around chelys (lyre made with tortoise shell) (1.89 grams / 11 x 10 mm) eBay May 2021 Another tiny one with a chelys but with Apollo. This one from Smyrna, I think, though again, I am uncertain: Ionia, Smyrna Æ 9 (c. 115-105 B.C.) Laureate head of Apollo right / [ZΜ?]ΥΡ / [?]PT[?], lyre with turtle shell. Milne, Autonomous 229; SNG Copenhagen 1179-80. (Attribution uncertain; no match for the visible letters) (0.67 grams / 9 mm) eBay Jan. 2020 Now on to the music - here is a Michael Levy YouTube video: "What did the Tortoise Shell Lyre of Hermes Sound Like?" Shred it, man!
