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Greek city of Amisos in Pontus
Bronze 20mm (6.50 grams) Struck under Mithradates VI the Great circa 95-90 or 80-70 B.C.
Reference: HGC 7, 245; SNG Black Sea 1220-1231; Sear 3644; SNG Cop 134
Laureate head of Zeus right.
Eagle standing left on thunderbolt, looking right; AMIΣOY below; monogram in field to left.
In mythology, Amisos was believed to be the original settlement of the Amazons. It was originally founded by Greeks from the cities of Phokaia and/or Miletos in circa 560 B.C. It was a flourishing Greek city on the Black Sea coast commanding an important trade route to the south. Amisos was under the control of the Achaemenid Empire, then re-settled by Athenians in the following century and they renamed the place Peiraeus. In subsequent times it played important historical roles as a city of the Kingdom of Bosporus. It was given the status of a free city under the Romans.
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 In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the “Father of Gods and men” who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.
Zeus was the child of Cronus and Rhea, and the youngest of his siblings. In most traditions he was married to Hera, although, at the oracle of Dodona, his consort was Dione: according to the Iliad, he is the father of Aphrodite by Dione. He is known for his erotic escapades. These resulted in many godly and heroic offspring, including Athena, Apollo and Artemis, Hermes, Persephone (by Demeter), Dionysus, Perseus, Heracles, Helen of Troy, Minos, and the Muses (by Mnemosyne); by Hera, he is usually said to have fathered Ares, Hebe and Hephaestus.
As Walter Burkert points out in his book, Greek Religion, “Even the gods who are not his natural children address him as Father, and all the gods rise in his presence.” For the Greeks, he was the King of the Gods, who oversaw the universe. As Pausanias observed, “That Zeus is king in heaven is a saying common to all men”. In Hesiod’s Theogony Zeus assigns the various gods their roles. In the Homeric Hymns he is referred to as the chieftain of the gods.
His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull, and oak. In addition to his Indo-European inheritance, the classical “cloud-gatherer” also derives certain iconographic traits from the cultures of the Ancient Near East, such as the scepter. Zeus is frequently depicted by Greek artists in one of two poses: standing, striding forward, with a thunderbolt leveled in his raised right hand, or seated in majesty.
 Mithridates VI or Mithradates VI (Greek: Μιθραδάτης), from Old Persian Mithradatha, “gift of Mithra”; 134-63 BC, also known as Mithradates the Great (Megas) and Eupator Dionysius, was king of Pontus and Armenia Minor in northern Anatolia (now Turkey) from about 120-63 BC. Mithridates is remembered as one of the Roman Republic’s most formidable and successful enemies, who engaged three of the prominent generals from the late Roman Republic in the Mithridatic Wars: Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Lucullus and Pompey. He was also the greatest ruler of the Kingdom of Pontus.
 Samsun is a city in northern Turkey, on the coast of the Black Sea, with a population of over 1 million. It is the capital city of Samsun Province and an important port. Samsun was founded as the colony Amisos (alternative spelling Amisus, Eis Amison – meaning to amisos took the name Samsunta or Samsus (Eis Amison – Samson – Samsounta) as in Greek + ounta “Greek toponomical suffix”. ) by settlers from Miletus in the 7th century BC.
History
Samsun’s original name was Enete (from Hitits.) Samsun’s ideal combination of fertile ground and shallow waters attracted numerous traders. Greek colonists settled in the 6th century BC and established a flourishing trade relationship with the ancient peoples of Anatolia. At that time, Samsun was part of the Greek colony of Amisus. In the 3rd century BC, Samsun came under the expanded rule of the Kingdom of Pontus. The Kingdom of Pontus had been part of the empire of Alexander the Great. However, the empire was fractured soon after Alexander’s death in the 4th century BC. At its height, the kingdom controlled the north of central Anatolia and mercantile towns on the northern Black Sea shores.
The Romans took over in 47 BC, and were replaced by the Byzantines after the fall of Rome. In 1200 Samsun was captured by the Seljuks, to be later taken over by the İlhanlılar. Samsun was incorporated into the network of Genoese trading posts and was taken by the Ottomans in the beginning of the 15th century. Before leaving, the Genoese razed the town.
Atatürk founded the Turkish republic movement at Samsun and it served as its base during the Turkish War of Independence.
For more details on this topic, see Turkish War of Independence.
The city is both an Eastern Orthodox and a Roman Catholic titular see.
Geography
Samsun is situated between two river deltas which jut into the Black Sea. It is located at the end of an ancient route from Cappadocia: the Amisos of antiquity lay on the headland northwest of the modern city. To Samsun’s west, lies the Kızılırmak (“Red River”, the Halys of antiquity), one of the longest rivers in Anatolia and its fertile delta. To the east, lie the Yeşilırmak (“Green River”, the Iris of antiquity) and its delta.
 Pontus is a historical Greek designation for a region on the southern coast of the Black Sea, located in modern-day eastern Black Sea Region of Turkey. The name was applied to the coastal region and its mountainous hinterland (rising to the Pontic Alps in the east) in antiquity by the Greeks who colonized the area and derived from the Greek name of the Black Sea: Pontos Euxeinos (“Hospitable Sea”), or simply Pontos. Having originally no specific name, the region east of the river Halys was spoken of as the country Ἐν Πόντῳ En Pontōi, “on the [Euxeinos] Pontos”, and hence it acquired the name of Pontus, which is first found in Xenophon’s Anabasis. The extent of the region varied through the ages but generally extended from the borders of Colchis (modern Georgia) until well into Paphlagonia in the west, with varying amounts of hinterland. Several states and provinces bearing the name of Pontus or variants thereof were established in the region in the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods, culminating in the late Byzantine Empire of Trebizond. Pontus is sometimes considered as the home of the Amazons, with the name Amazon used not only for a city (Amasya) but for all of Pontus in Greek mythology.
Pontus became important as a bastion of Byzantine Greek and Greek Orthodox civilization and attracted Greeks from all backgrounds (scholars, traders, mercenaries, refugees) from all over Anatolia and the southern Balkans, from the Classical and Hellenistic periods into the Byzantine and Ottoman. These Greeks of Pontus are generally referred to as Pontic Greeks.
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