Item: i118543

Authentic Ancient Coin of:

Greek city of Telmessos in Lycia
Bronze Dichalkon 13mm (3.42 grams) Struck Before 190-189 BC, (under Antiochos III after the battle of Magnesia)
Reference: BMC 1 var. (draped bust); SNG von Aulock 4451 var. (same).
Head of Helios facing.
TEΛMHCCEΩN, Apollo seated left on omphalos, holding bow in left hand and arrow in right.

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In Greek mythology, the sun was personified as Helios. Homer often calls him simply Titan or Hyperion, while Hesiod (Theogony 371) and the Homeric Hymn separate him as a son of the Titans Hyperion and Theia (Hesiod) or Euryphaessa (Homeric Hymn) and brother of the goddesses Selene, the moon, and Eos, the dawn. The names of these three were also the common Greek words for sun, moon and dawn.

Helios was imagined as a handsome god crowned with the shining aureole of the sun, who drove the chariot of the sun across the sky each day to earth-circling Oceanus and through the world-ocean returned to the East at night. Homer described Helios’s chariot as drawn by solar steeds (Iliad xvi.779); later Pindar described it as drawn by “fire-darting steeds” (Olympian Ode 7.71). Still later, the horses were given fiery names: Pyrois, Aeos, Aethon, and Phlegon.

As time passed, Helios was increasingly identified with the god of light, Apollo. However, in spite of their syncretism, they were also often viewed as two distinct gods (Helios was a Titan, whereas Apollo was an Olympian). The equivalent of Helios in Roman mythology was Sol, specifically Sol Invictus.
 

In Greek and Roman mythology, Apollo, is one of the most important and diverse of the Olympian deities. The ideal of the 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.

Telmessos or Telmessus (Ancient Greek: Τελμησσός), also Telmissus (Ancient Greek: Τελμισσός), later Anastasiopolis (Ancient Greek: Αναστασιούπολις), then Makri or Macre (Greek: Μάκρη), was the largest city in Lycia, near the Carian border, and is sometimes confused with Telmessos in Caria. It was called Telebehi in the Lycian language. The well-protected harbor of Telmessos is separated from the Gulf of Telmessos by an island. The name of the modern town on the site is Fethiye.

The city was known as Kuwalapašša by the Hittites and Telebehi by the Lycians. According to the annals of Hattusili III, the city was a part of Lycia (which was known as Lukka at the time) and conquered by the Hittites. Another Hittite document mentions the cities of Kuwalapašša and Dalawa sent aid to Hittites during the war against Iyalanda.

Telmessos was a flourishing city in the west of Lycia, on the Gulf of Fethiye. It was famed for its school of diviners, consulted among others by the Lydian king Croesus, prior to declaring war against Cyrus, and by Alexander the Great, when he came to the town after the siege of Halicarnassus.

Telmessos was a member of the Delian League in the 5th century BC. It was taken by Alexander in 334 BC.

Telmessos was renamed Anastasiopolis in the 8th century AD, apparently in honour of Emperor Anastasios II, but this name did not persist. The city came to be called Makri, after the name of the island at the entrance to the harbor. This name is attested for the first time in 879 AD.

However, an inscription of the 7th century found in Gibraltar and bearing the ethnonym “Makriotes” (from Makri) may indicate an earlier existence of name Makri. Its ruins are located at Fethiye.