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Greek city of
Philippi
in
Macedonia
Bronze 17mm (5.40 grams) Struck 357-330 B.C.
Reference: Sear 1452 var.; B.M.C. 5.8 var.
Head of young
Hercules
left in lion’s skin.
Tripod
; ΦIΛIΠΠΩΝ to right.
Following Philip II’s capture of Amphipolis in 357 B.C. and
his acquisition of the mining area of Mt. Pangaion, the mining center of
Krenides was given the name of Philippi in the king’s honor.
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HERCULES – This celebrated
of mythological romance was at first called Alcides, but received the name of
Hercules, or Heracles, from the Pythia of Delphos. Feigned by the poets of
antiquity to have been a son of “the Thunderer,” but born of an earthly mother,
he was exposed, through Juno’s implacable hatred to him as the offspring of
Alemena, to a course of perils, which commenced whilst he was yet in his cradle,
and under each of which he seemed to perish, but as constantly proved
victorious.
At
length finishing his allotted career with native valor and generosity, though
too frequently the submissive agent of the meanness and injustice of others, he
perished self-devotedly on the funeral pile, which was lighted on Mount Oeta.
Jupiter raised his heroic progeny to the skies; and Hercules was honored by the
pagan world, as the most illustrious of deified mortals. The extraordinary
enterprises cruelly imposed upon, but gloriously achieved, by this famous
demigod, are to be found depicted, not only on Greek coins, but also on the
Roman series both consular and imperial. The first, and one of the most
dangerous, of undertakings, well-known under the name of the twelve labors of
Hercules, was that of killing the huge lion of Nemea; on which account the
intrepid warrior is represented, clothes in the skin of that forest monarch; he
also bears uniformly a massive club, sometimes without any other arms, but at
others with a bow and quiver of arrows. On a denarius of the Antia gens he is
represented walking with trophy and club.
When his head alone is typified, as in Mucia gens, it is covered with the lion’s
spoils, in which distinctive decoration he was imitated by many princes, and
especially by those who claimed descent from him – as for example, the kings of
Macedonia, and the successors of Alexander the Great. Among the Roman emperors
Trajan is the first whose coins exhibit the figure and attributes of Hercules.
A sacrificial tripod was a type of
altar
used by the
ancient Greeks. The most famous was the
Delphic
tripod
, on
which the Pythian
priestess
took her seat to deliver the
oracles
of the
deity. The seat was formed by a circular slab on the top of the tripod, on which
a branch of
laurel
was deposited when it was unoccupied by the priestess. In this sense,
by Classical times the tripod was sacred to
Apollo
. The
mytheme
of
Heracles
contesting with Apollo for the tripod appears in vase-paintings older than the
oldest written literature. The oracle originally may have been related to the
primal deity, the Earth.
Another well-known tripod was the
Plataean Tripod
, made from a tenth part of the spoils taken from the
Persian
army after the
Battle of Plataea
. This consisted of a golden basin, supported by a
bronze
serpent
with three heads (or three serpents intertwined), with a list of the
states that had taken part in the war inscribed on the coils of the serpent. The
golden bowl was carried off by the
Phocians
during
the
Third Sacred War
; the stand was removed by the emperor
Constantine
to
Constantinople
(modern
Istanbul
),
where it still can be seen in the
hippodrome
, the Atmeydanı, although in damaged condition, the heads
of the serpents disappeared however one is now on display at the nearby Istanbul
Archaeology Museums. The inscription, however, has been restored almost
entirely. Such tripods usually had three ears (rings which served as
handles) and frequently had a central upright as support in addition to the
three legs.
Tripods frequently are mentioned by
Homer
as prizes
in
athletic games
and as complimentary gifts; in later times, highly decorated
and bearing inscriptions, they served the same purpose. They also were used as
dedicatory offerings
to the deities, and in the dramatic contests at the
Dionysia
the victorious
choregus
(a wealthy citizen who bore the expense of equipping and training
the chorus) received a crown and a tripod. He would either dedicate the tripod
to some deity or set it upon the top of a marble structure erected in the form
of a small circular temple in a street in
Athens
, called
the street of tripods, from the large number of memorials of this kind.
One of these, the
Choragic Monument of Lysicrates
, erected by him to commemorate his victory
in a dramatic contest in
335 BC
, still
stands. The form of the victory tripod, now missing from the top of the
Lysicrates monument, has been rendered variously by scholars since the
eighteenth century.
The scholar
Martin L. West
writes that the sibyl at Delphi shows many traits of
shamanistic
practices, likely inherited or influenced from Central Asian
practices. He cites her sitting in a cauldron on a tripod, while making her
prophecies, her being in an ecstatic trance state, similar to shamans, and her
utterings, unintelligible.
According to Herodotus (The Histories, I.144), the victory tripods were not
to be taken from the temple sanctuary precinct, but left there for dedication.
Philippi
was established by the
king of Macedon
, Philip II, on the site of the
Thasian
colony
of Krinides or
Crenides
(“Fountains”), near the head of the
Aegean Sea
at the foot of
Mt. Orbelos
about 8 miles north-west of
Kavalla
, on the northern border of the marsh that in Antiquity covered the
entire plain separating it from the
Pangaion hills
to the south of Greece.
The objective of founding the town was to take control of the neighbouring
gold mines and to
establish a garrison at a strategic passage: the site controlled the route
between Amphipolis
and Neapolis
, part of the great royal route which crosses Macedonia from the
east to the west and which was reconstructed later by the
Roman
Empire
as the
Via
Egnatia
. Philip II endowed the new city with important fortifications,
which partially blocked the passage between the swamp and Mt. Orbelos, and sent
colonists to occupy it. Philip also had the marsh partially drained, as is
attested by the writer
Theophrastus
. Philippi preserved its autonomy within the kingdom of Macedon
and had its own political institutions (the
Assembly
of the
demos
). The
discovery of new gold mines near the city, at Asyla, contributed to the wealth
of the kingdom and Philip established a mint there. The city was finally fully
integrated into the kingdom under
Philip V
.
The city remained despite its modest size of perhaps 2000 people. When the
Romans destroyed the
Antigonid dynasty
of Macedon in 167
BC
and divided it into four separate states (merides), it was
Amphipolis and not Philippi that became the capital of the eastern Macedonian
state.
Almost nothing is known about the city in this period, aside from the walls,
the
Greek theatre
, the foundations of a house under the
Roman forum
and a little temple dedicated to a
hero cult
. This monument covers the tomb of a certain Exekestos, is possibly
situated on the agora
and is dedicated to the κτίστης (ktistès), the foundation hero of the
city.
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