LAMPSAKOS in MYSIA 400BCGorgoneion Thyrsos Poss UNPUB Ancient Greek Coin i56093

Item: i56093

Authentic Ancient 

Coin of:

Greek city of Lampsakos in Mysia
Bronze 9mm (1.33 grams) Struck circa 400-300 B.C.
Reference: Possibly Unpublished Type
Head of Gorgoneion facing.
ΛΑΜ, Thyrsos.

You are bidding on the exact item pictured, 

Authenticity.

In Ancient Greece
, the Gorgoneion (Greek: 
Γοργόνειον) was originally a horror-creating
apotropaic

pendant 
showing the
Gorgon‘s head. It was assimilated by the
Olympian deities

Zeus 
and Athena: 
both are said to have worn it as a protective
pendant. 
It was assumed, among other godlike attributes, as a royal
aegis, 
by rulers of the Hellenistic age, as shown, for instance, on the

Alexander Mosaic and the

Gonzaga Cameo.

Homer 
refers to the Gorgon on four occasions, each time alluding to the head alone, as 
if the creature had no body.
Jane Ellen Harrison
notes that “Medusa is a 
head and nothing more…a mask
with a body later appended”. Up to the 5th 
century BC, the head was depicted as particularly ugly, with a protruding 
tongue,
boar

tusks, puffy cheeks, her eyeballs staring fixedly on the viewer and 
the snakes twisting all around her.

The direct frontal stare, “seemingly looking out from its own iconographical 
context and directly challenging the viewer”, was highly unusual in ancient 
Greek art. In some instances a beard (probably standing for streaks of blood) 
was appended to her chin, making her appear as an
orgiastic deity
akin to
Dionysus.

Gorgoneia that decorate the shields of warriors on mid-5th century Greek 
vases are considerably less grotesque and menacing. By that time, the Gorgon had 
lost her tusks and the snakes were rather stylized. The
Hellenistic
marble known as the

Medusa Rondanini illustrates the Gorgon’s eventual transformation 
into a beautiful woman.

A
thyrsus or thyrsos was a wand or staff of giant fennel (Ferula 
communis) covered with
ivy
vines and leaves, sometimes wound with
taeniae
and always topped with a

pine
cone
.

Symbolism

The thyrsus, associated with
Dionysus
(or Bacchus) and his followers, the
Satyrs
and
Maenads
, is a symbol of
prosperity
,
fertility
,
hedonism
, and pleasure/enjoyment in general. It 
has been suggested that this was specifically a fertility
phallus
, with the fennel representing the shaft 
of the penis and the pine cone representing the “seed” issuing forth. The 
thyrsus was tossed in the Bacchic dance:

Pentheus: The thyrsus— in my right hand shall I hold it?

Or thus am I more like a Bacchanal?

Dionysus: In thy right hand, and with thy right foot raise it”.

Sometimes the thyrsus was displayed in conjunction with a
kantharos
wine cup, another symbol of Dionysus, 
forming a male-and-female combination like that of the royal scepter and orb.

Use

In
Greek religion
, the staff was carried by the
votaries
of Dionysus.
Euripides
wrote that
honey
dripped from the thyrsos staves that the 
Bacchic maenads
carried. The thyrsus was a sacred 
instrument at religious
rituals
and

fêtes.

The fabulous history of Bacchus relates that he converted the thyrsi carried 
by himself and his followers into dangerous weapons, by concealing an iron point 
in the head of leaves. Hence his thyrsus is called “a spear enveloped in 
vine-leaves”, and its point was thought to incite to madness.

Literature

In the Iliad
,
Diomedes
, one of the leading warriors of the
Achaeans
, mentions the thyrsus while speaking 
to
Glaucus
, one of the
Lycian
commanders in the

Trojan army, about
Lycurgus
, the king of
Scyros
:

He it was that/drove the nursing women who were in charge/of frenzied 
Bacchus through the land of Nysa,/and they flung their thyrsi on the 
ground as/murderous Lycurgus beat them with his ox-/goad. (Iliad, 
Book VI.132-37)

The thyrsus is explicitly attributed to Dionysus in
Euripides
‘s play
The Bacchae
as part of the costume of the 
Dionysian cult.

…To raise my Bacchic shout, and clothe all who respond/ In fawnskin 
habits, and put my thyrsus in their hands–/ The weapon wreathed with 
ivy-shoots…” Euripides also writes, “There’s a brute wildness in the 
fennel-wands—Reverence it well.” (The Bacchae and Other Plays, trans. 
by Philip Vellacott, Penguin, 1954.)

Plato
writes in
Phaedo
:

I conceive that the founders of the mysteries had a real meaning and were 
not mere triflers when they intimated in a figure long ago that he who 
passes unsanctified and uninitiated into the world below will live in a 
slough, but that he who arrives there after initiation and purification will 
dwell with the gods. For “many,” as they say in the mysteries, “are the
thyrsus bearers, but few are the mystics,”–meaning, as I interpret the 
words, the true philosophers.

In Part II of
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
‘s
Faust
,
Mephistopheles
tries to catch a
Lamia
, only to find out that she is an 
illusion:

Well, then, a tall one I will catch…/And now a thyrsus-pole I 
snatch!/Only a pine-cone as its head. (7775-7777)

Robert Browning
mentions the thyrsus in passing 
in The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St Praxed’s Church, as the dying bishop 
confuses Christian piety with classical extravagance:

The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me,/Those
Pans
and
nymphs
ye wot of, and perchance/Some
tripod
, thrysus, with a vase or so, 
(56-58)

Lampsacus (Greek:

Λάμψακος, Lampsakos, modern:Lapseki) 

was an ancient Greek

city strategically located on the eastern side of the

Hellespont
 

in the northern Troad
. 

An inhabitant of Lampsacus was called a Lampsacene. The name has been 

transmitted in the nearby modern town of

Lapseki
.

//

 History

Originally known as Pityusa or Pityussa 

(Greek:

Πιτυουσα, Pituousa, or Πιτυουσσα,

Pituoussa), it was colonized from

Phocaea
and

Miletus
. 

During the

6th
 

and 5th century BC

, Lampsacus was successively dominated by

Lydia
,

Persia

, Athens
, 

and Sparta
;

Artaxerxes I

assigned it to

Themistocles

with the expectation that the city supply the Persian king with 

its famous wine
. 

Lampsacus joined the

Delian League

after the

battle of Mycale

, and paid a tribute of twelve

talents

, a testimony to its wealth, and it had a

gold coinage in the

4th 

century BC
, an activity only available to the more prosperous cities.

A revolt against the Athenians in

411 BC
was put 

down by force. In 196 BC

, the

Romans
 

defended the town against

Antiochus the Great

, and it became an ally of Rome;

Cicero
(2 

Verr. i. 24. 63) and

Strabo
(13. 1. 

15) attest its continuing prosperity under Roman rule. Lampsacus was also 

notable for its worship of

Priapus
, who 

was said to have been born there.

Lampsacus produced a series of notable philosophers.

Metrodorus of Lampsacus (the elder)

(5th century BC) was a philosopher from 

the school of

Anaxagoras
.

Strato of Lampsacus

(c. 335-c. 269 BC) was a Peripatetic philosopher and the 

third director of Aristotle’s

Lyceum
at 

Athens.

Euaeon of Lampsacus

was one of

Plato
‘s students. 

A group of Lampsacenes were in the circle of

Epicurus
; 

they included

Polyaenus of Lampsacus

(c. 340 – 278 BC) a mathematician, the philosophers

Idomeneus of Lampsacus

,

Colotes
the 

satirist and

Leonteus of Lampsacus

;

Batis of Lampsacus

the wife of Idomeneus, was the sister of

Metrodorus of Lampsacus (the younger)

, whose elder brother, also a friend of 

Epicurus, was

Timocrates of Lampsacus

.

 Christian 

history

According to legend,

St Tryphon

was buried at Lampsacus after his martyrdom at

Nicaea

in 250 AD
.

The first known bishop

in Lampsacus was

Parthenius

, under

Constantine I

. In 364, the

see
 

was occupied by Marcian

and in the same year a council of bishops was held at Lampsacus. 

Marcian, was summoned to the

First Council of Constantinople

of

Constantinople

in 381, but refused to retract his adherence of the

Macedonian

Christian

sect. Other known 

Bishops of Lampsacus were

Daniel

, who assisted at the

Council of Chalcedon

(451);

Harmonius

(458); Constantine (680), who attended the

Third Council of Constantinople

; John (787), at Nicaea;

St. Euschemon

, a correspondent of

St. Theodore the Studite

, and a confessor of the Faith for the veneration of 

images, under

Theophilus
. 

The See of Lampsacus is mentioned in the “Notitiae 

Episcopatuum” until about the twelfth or thirteenth century.

 Modern 

settlement

The nearby settlement of

Lapseki
has 

inherited the name; its population is now in the region of 11,000.