GARGARA in TROAS 350BC Apollo Horse RARE Big Authentic Ancient Greek Coin i56091

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Item: i56091

 

Authentic Ancient 

Coin of:

Greek city of Gargara in Troas
Bronze 8mm (0.61 grams) Struck circa 400-284 B.C.
Reference: Sear 4090 var.; Cf. SNG Copenhagen 316
Laureate head of Apollo right.
ΓAΡ above horse galloping right; thunderbolt below.

On the Gulf of Adramytteion, between Antandros and Assos, the 
territory of Gargara was famed for the fertility of its soil.

You are bidding on the exact item pictured, 

provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of 

Authenticity.


2nd century AD Roman statue of Apollo depicting the god's attributes—the lyre and the snake Python

In 
Greek
and
Roman mythology
,
Apollo

is one of the most important and diverse of the

Olympian deities
kouros
(a beardless youth), Apollo has been 
variously recognized as a god of light and the sun; truth and prophecy;
archery
; medicine and healing; music, poetry, 
and the arts; and more. Apollo is the son of

Zeus
and Leto
, and has a
twin
sister, the chaste huntress
Artemis
. Apollo is known in Greek-influenced
Etruscan mythology
as Apulu. Apollo was 
worshiped in both
ancient Greek
and
Roman religion
, as well as in the modern
Greco
Roman
Neopaganism
.

As the patron of Delphi
(Pythian Apollo), Apollo was an
oracular
god — the prophetic deity of the
Delphic Oracle
. Medicine and healing were 
associated with Apollo, whether through the god himself or mediated through his 
son Asclepius
, yet Apollo was also seen as a god 
who could bring ill-health and deadly
plague
as well as one who had the ability to 
cure. Amongst the god’s custodial charges, Apollo became associated with 
dominion over
colonists
, and as the patron defender of herds 
and flocks. As the leader of the

Muses
(Apollon Musagetes) and director of their choir, Apollo 
functioned as the patron god of music and
poetry
.
Hermes
created the

lyre
for him, and the instrument became a common
attribute
of Apollo. Hymns sung to Apollo were 
called paeans
.

In Hellenistic times, especially during the third century BCE, as Apollo 
Helios
he became identified among Greeks with
Helios
,
god of the sun
, and his sister Artemis 
similarly equated with
Selene
,
goddess of the moon
. In Latin texts, on the 
other hand, Joseph Fontenrose declared himself unable to find any conflation of 
Apollo with
Sol
among the
Augustan poets
of the first century, not even 
in the conjurations of
Aeneas
and
Latinus
in
Aeneid
XII (161–215). Apollo and Helios/Sol 
remained separate beings in literary and mythological texts until the third 
century CE..


Gargara was a
Greek
city on the southern coast of the
Troad
region of
Anatolia
. It was initially located beneath 
Mount Gargaron, one of the three peaks of
Mount Ida
, today known as Koca Kaya  At 
some point in the 4th century BCE the settlement moved approximately 5.8 km 
south of Koca Kaya to a site on the small coastal plain near the modern villages 
of
Arıklı
and
Nusratlı
, at which point the previous site came 
to be known as Old Gargara (Ancient 
Greek
Παλαιγάργαρος). 
Both sites are located in the
Ayvacık
district of
Çanakkale Province
in
Turkey
.

Mount Gargaron

Mount Gargaron has been identified with the mountain today called Koca Kaya (Turkish
Great Rock), a western spur of Mount Ida with a maximum elevation of 780 
m. The poet
Epicharmus
(fl. 540 – 450 BCE) refers to 
the mountain as “snowcapped” (ἀγάννιφα), and the
Etymologicum Magnum
(ca. 1150 CE) knew a 
tradition according to which the inhabitants of Old Gargara moved to their new 
site to escape the cold of their old home. In
Homer’s

Iliad
it is said to have had an altar to

Zeus
at its summit, and hence is a place the god frequently visits. 
In one passage Zeus is said to have come to Mount Gargaron from
Mount Olympos
to view the battle between the

Trojans
and the
Acahaeans
, about 50 km NE of here. In writers 
of the 1st and 2nd century AD such as
Statius
and
Lucian
Zeus is said to have abducted the Trojan 
prince
Ganymede
from Mount Gargaron while he was 
hunting in the nearby forests. Lucian also represents the
Judgement of Paris
as taking place on Mount 
Gargaron rather than in its more traditional location further to the east above
Antandrus
. The anonymous author of On Rivers 
thought that Gargara was Mount Ida’s previous name, while the Latin poet
Valerius Flaccus
used it as a learned way of 
referring to Ida. The Etymologicum Magnum explains the name of Gargaron 
either as deriving from the verb γαργαρίζειν (‘to gargle’) on account of the 
springs thought to bubble up on the summit (an inference taken from Homer’s 
reference to ‘many-fountained Ida’ in conjunction with Gargaron), or as deriving 
from γαργαρέων (‘uvulaa‘) 
on account of the mountain’s shape.

The poet Aratus
of
Soli
wrote an epigram about his friend Diotimos, 
who used to teach the children of Gargara their letters up on Mount Gargaron:

αἰάζω Διότιμον, ὃς ἐν πέτρῃσι κάθηται
παισὶν Γαργαρέων βῆτα καὶ ἄλφα λέγων.
I bewail Diotimos, who would sit among the rocks
Teaching the children of the Gargarians their alpha and beta.

History

Foundation

There is no indication in the relevant passages of the Iliad that 
Homer considered Mount Gargaron inhabited. This is partly confirmed by the fact 
that the earliest archaeological remains found at the site (fortification walls 
around the acropolis and the foundations of a temple) date no later than the 6th 
century BCE. In the 7th century BCE the poet
Alcman
said that the settlement was inhabited 
by Leleges
, an Anatolian people, but this may 
simply be an inference from Homer’s remark elsewhere in the Iliad that 
the whole southern coast of the Troad was inhabited by Leleges.[14]
Hecataeus of Miletus
(ca. 550 – 476 BCE) and
Hellanicus of Mytilene
(ca. 490 – 405 BCE) say 
that Gargara was inhabited by
Aeolian
Greeks originally from nearby
Assos
and Myrsilos of
Methymna
(first half of the 3rd century BCE) 
that Assos was a foundation of Methymna, hence the Aeolian ethnicity of Assos 
and the secondary foundations of Gargara and
Lamponeia
. If Alcman was correct to indicate 
the existence of an Anatolian settlement named Gargara in the 7th century BCE, 
then this fact could be harmonized with the apparently contradictory story of 
Gargara instead being a Greek foundation by noting that many settlements in this 
region had a mixed Greco-Anatolian heritage in which the local Anatolian 
population became assimilated with the Greek newcomers. With respect to how the 
early settlement came to adopt the name of the mountain, John Cook, the 
archaeologist who identified the site of Old Gargara on Koca Kaya, remarked 
that: “What we can believe is that the people of Methymna across the strait 
pointed to this bold peak as the Homeric Γάργαρον ἄκρον and that the settlers 
there felt themselves entitled to appropriate the name”.

Classical

In the 5th century BCE Gargara was a member of the
Delian League
and paid a tribute to Athens of 
between 4,500 and 4,600
drachmas
as part of the Hellespontine district. 
It is currently thought that the Gargarians moved from the site at Koca Kaya 
down to the coast in the 4th century BCE, although this has not been confirmed 
by excavation. A long inscription found at
Ilion
indicates that by ca. 306 Gargara was a 
member of the koinon
of Athena Ilias, a regional 
association of cities in the Troad which held an annual festival at Ilion. The 
inscription records a series of honorific decrees passed by the koinon 
which praise a prominent and wealthy citizen, Malousios of Gargara, for 
providing interest free loans to finance the annual festival.

Hellenistic

The local antiquarian writer
Demetrius of Scepsis
(ca. 205-130 BCE) relates 
that Gargara received an influx of settlers who were forcibly moved their home 
in Mysia
,
Miletoupolis
, by ‘the kings’ (presumably those 
of
Bithynia
) in the late 3rd or early 2nd century 
BCE. Miletoupolis was a semi-Greek settlement, and so Demetrius relates that as 
a result of this influx of immigrants there are hardly any Aeolians left in 
Gargara. This episode should perhaps be connection with the invasion of this 
region by
Prusias II of Bithynia
in 156 – 154 BCE. 
Elsewhere in the Hellenistic period, citizens of Gargara are found serving as
proxenoi
at
Chios
and as mercenaries at
Athens
, participating in a private association 
of resident foreigners on
Rhodes
, making dedications to
Ptolemy III Euergetes
and his family in Egypt, 
receiving honours at Ilion, and making dedications on
Delos
. In the 230s or 220s BCE Gargara was one 
of the places at which
Theorodokoi
of
Delphi
were received, and in the 120s BCE it is 
attested as a port at which customs dues was being paid soon after
Attalus III
had bequeathed the
Asia
to Rome in 133 BCE.

Roman

While Gargara continued to exist in the Roman period, we hear about it 
primarily in the context of Latin literature, since it became a by-word for 
agricultural prosperity in Latin poetry following
Virgil’s
reference to it in the
Georgics
:

humida solstitia atque hiemes orate serenas,
agricolae; hiberno laetissima pulvere farra,
laetus ager: nullo tantum se Mysia cultu
iactat et ipsa suas mirantur Gargara messis.
Pray for wet summer, farmers, and for clear skies in winter
(since after winter dust most joyous is the corn and joyous the
fields); never else than after such seasons does
Mysia
take such
pride in its tillage, and Gargara itself marvel so at its 
harvests
.

Gargara is likewise used as an expression of proverbial fertility in

Ovid’s

Ars Amatoria
,
Seneca’s
tragedy The Phoenician Women
and as late as the 5th century CE in the odes of
Sidonius Apollinaris
.
Macrobius
in his
Saturnalia
(early 5th century CE) devoted a 
chapter to the question of what had given Virgil the idea of using Gargara this 
way in the first place, concluding that it was an inference firstly from Mount 
Ida’s reputation for being well-watered in Homer, secondly from Mysia’s general 
reputation for fertility, and thirdly from the use of γάργαρα (gargara
in
Old Comedy
to express an immense quantity of 
anything.

Byzantine

Gargara appears to have been continuously occupied until at least the 9th 
century CE, and perhaps as late as the 14th century CE. It was a
suffragan bishopric
of the
metropolis
of
Ephesus
for which we know the names of three of 
its bishops: John (518 CE), Theodorus (553 CE), and Ephraim (878 CE). In 
addition to possible middle Byzantine remains seen at Gargara by John Cook, 
other documents such as the Epistulae Dogmaticae of
Patriarch Germanus I of Constantinople
(715-730 
CE) and the
Notitiae Episcopatuum
also attest Gargara’s 
continued existence throughout this period. Finally, four documents from the
Monastery of Great Lavra
on
Mount Athos
dating to 1284 and 1304 CE attest a 
Constantine of Gargara and his family. The latest period of occupation at the 
site may be represented by the nearby castles of Menteşe and Şahin Kale which 
Cook thought could be either Byzantine or
Genoese
.


   

    

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