Item: i117919

Authentic Ancient Coin of:

Kingdom of Galatia
Amyntas – King: 36-25 B.C.
Bronze 19mm (6.65 grams) Struck circa 36-25 B.C.
Reference: HGC 7, 781. RPC I 3502. SNG BN 2354.
Head of bearded Hercules to right with club over his shoulder.  ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΑΜΥΝΤΟΥ Lion (or Mythological Nemean Lion) walking to right.

Amyntas was a secretary of Deiotaros. He was in the military service commanding an auxiliary force in the Roman army of Brutus and Cassius. Having gained the favor of Mark Antony, because he had gone over to his side before the Battle of Philippi, Antony granted him an extensive kingdom which included Galatia, Lycaonia and parts of neighboring territories. Having deserted Antony in a timely manner to Augustus, he secured the patronage of Augustus. After having perished in battle in 25 B.C., his kingdom became a Roman province.

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Hercules, made temporarily insane by the goddess Hera, murdered his wife and children. Once recovered, and distressed by his actions, Hercules consulted the Delphic Oracle to find a means of expiating his sin. As a punishment, Apollo replied that the hero would have to serve his cousin Eurystheus, the king Tiryns, a man whom Hercules despised, for a period of twelve years. Because Eurystheus also hated Hercules, he devised a series of ten feats of such difficulty that they would be either insurmountable, or Hercules would die in the attempt. Because Hercules received assistance in completing two of the tasks, Eurystheus added two more. Each labor became more fantastic, and eventually Hercules was compelled to break the bonds of the supernatural in order to complete his task. Once he accomplished the Labors, Hercules was absolved of his guilt, and proceeded to perform many other heroic feats.The First Labor was to slay the Nemean Lion and bring back its skin. The Nemean Lion, called thus as it had been terrorizing the area around Nemea, had a skin so thick that it was impenetrable to weapons. After making futile attempts to subdue it with his weapons, Hercules cast them aside and wrestled the lion to the ground, eventually killing it by thrusting his arm down its throat and choking it to death. Skinning the beast was no easy task, either. After Hercules spent hours trying unsuccessfully to skin the lion, Athena, in the guise of an old crone, appeared to him, and convinced him to use the creature’s own claws to cut the hide. Thereafter, the hide became the hero’s own impenetrable armor. When Eurystheus saw Hercules wearing his new fearsome outfit, he hid in a large bronze jar, and thenceforth commanded the hero through a herald.

Leo is one of the constellations of the zodiac, lying between Cancer to the west and Virgo to the east. Its name is Latin for lion, and to the ancient Greeks represented the Nemean Lion killed by the mythical Greek hero Heracles (known to the ancient Romans as Hercules) as one of his twelve labors. Its symbol is ( ♌). One of the 48 constellations described by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy, Leo remains one of the 88 modern constellations today, and one of the most easily recognizable due to its many bright stars and a distinctive shape that is reminiscent of the crouching lion it depicts. The lion’s mane and shoulders also form an asterism known as “the Sickle,” which to modern observers may resemble a backwards “question mark.”

Amyntas (Ancient Greek: Ἀμύντας), Tetrarch of the Trocmi was a King of Galatia and of several adjacent countries between 36 BC and 25 BC, mentioned by Strabo as contemporary with himself. He was the son of Brogitarus, king of Galatia, and Adobogiona, daughter of king Deiotarus Philoromaeus.

Amyntas seems to have first possessed Lycaonia, where he maintained more than 300 flocks. To this he added the territory of Derbe by the murder of its prince, Antipater of Derbe, the friend of Cicero, and Isaura and Cappadocia by Roman favour. Originally he had been the king of Cappadocia Deiotarus secretary (γραμματεύς), and was made by Amyntas commander in chief (στρατηγός) of the Galatian auxiliaries sent to help Brutus and Cassius against the Triumvires, but deserted to Mark Anthony just before the battle of Philippi (42 BC).

After the death of Deiotarus, he was made king of Cappadocia in 37 BC as a client ruler of Mark Anthony. Plutarch enumerates him among the adherents of Mark Antony at Actium and is mentioned as deserting to Octavian, just before the battle (31 BC).

While pursuing his schemes of aggrandizement, and endeavoring to reduce the refractory highlanders around him, Amyntas made himself master of Homonada or Hoinona, and slew the prince of that place; but his death was avenged by his widow, and Amyntas fell a victim in 25 BC to an ambush which she laid for him. On his death Galatia became a Roman province.

He was the father of Artemidoros of the Trocmi, a Galatian nobleman, who married a princess of the Tectosagi, the daughter of Amyntas, Tetrarch of the Tectosagii. They were the parents of Gaius Julius Severus, a nobleman from Acmonia in Galatia, who was in turn the father of Gaius Julius Bassus, proconsul of Bithynia in 98, and Gaius Julius Severus, a Tribune of the Legio VI Ferrata.