ANTIOCH in SELEUKIS and PIERIA 56BCZeus Tripod Ancient Greek Coin RARE i50336

Item: i50336

Authentic Ancient

Coin of:

Greek city of
Antioch
in SELEUKIS AND PIERIA
Pseudo-autonomous issue
Bronze 14mm (3.89 grams) Struck circa 56-21 B.C.
Reference: HGC 9, 1376 (R2); Sear 5854
Laureate head of Zeus right.
ANTIOXEΩN ΤΗΣ / AYTONOMOY,
Tripod, ‘Caesarean’ era date in exergue.

One of the most celebrated cities of Antiquity, Antiocheia on
the Orontes was founded by Seleukos in 300 B.C. It was the royal capital of
Seleukid Empire.

You are bidding on the exact item pictured,

Authenticity.

In the
ancient Greek

religion, Zeus was the
“Father of Gods and men” (πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν
τε)
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.

A sacrificial tripod was a type of
altar
used by the ancient Greeks. The most
famous was the Delphic

tripod
, on which the
Pythian priestess
took her seat to deliver the
oracles
of the deity. The seat was formed by a
circular slab on the top of the tripod, on which a branch of
laurel
was deposited when it was unoccupied by
the priestess. In this sense, by Classical times the tripod was sacred to
Apollo
. The
mytheme
of
Heracles
contesting with Apollo for the tripod
appears in vase-paintings older than the oldest written literature. The oracle
originally may have been related to the primal deity, the Earth.

Another well-known tripod was the
Plataean Tripod
, made from a tenth part of the
spoils taken from the
Persian
army after the
Battle of Plataea
. This consisted of a golden
basin, supported by a
bronze

serpent
with three heads (or three serpents
intertwined), with a list of the states that had taken part in the war inscribed
on the coils of the serpent. The golden bowl was carried off by the
Phocians
during the
Third Sacred War
; the stand was removed by the
emperor
Constantine
to
Constantinople
(modern
Istanbul
), where it still can be seen in the
hippodrome
, the Atmeydanı, although in
damaged condition, the heads of the serpents disappeared however one is now on
display at the nearby Istanbul Archaeology Museums. The inscription, however,
has been restored almost entirely. Such tripods usually had three ears
(rings which served as handles) and frequently had a central upright as support
in addition to the three legs.

Tripods frequently are mentioned by
Homer
as prizes in
athletic games
and as complimentary gifts; in
later times, highly decorated and bearing inscriptions, they served the same
purpose. They also were used as dedicatory
offerings
to the deities, and in the dramatic
contests at the Dionysia
the victorious
choregus
(a wealthy citizen who bore the
expense of equipping and training the chorus) received a crown and a tripod. He
would either dedicate the tripod to some deity or set it upon the top of a
marble structure erected in the form of a small circular temple in a street in
Athens
, called the street of tripods,
from the large number of memorials of this kind. One of these, the
Choragic Monument of Lysicrates
, erected by him
to commemorate his victory in a dramatic contest in
335 BC
, still stands. The form of the victory
tripod, now missing from the top of the Lysicrates monument, has been rendered
variously by scholars since the eighteenth century.

The scholar
Martin L. West
writes that the sibyl at Delphi
shows many traits of
shamanistic
practices, likely inherited or
influenced from Central Asian practices. He cites her sitting in a cauldron on a
tripod, while making her prophecies, her being in an ecstatic trance state,
similar to shamans, and her utterings, unintelligible.

According to Herodotus (The Histories, I.144), the victory tripods were not
to be taken from the temple sanctuary precinct, but left there for dedication.

(Antioch on the OrontessGreek:

Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπὶ Δάφνῃ, Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπὶ Ὀρόντου or

Ἀντιόχεια ἡ Μεγάλη;

Latin

: Antiochia ad Orontem;

also Great Antioch or S-y-ri-an Antioch; Arabic:انطاکیه) was an

ancient city on the eastern side of the

Orontes River

. It is near the modern city of

Antakya
,

Turkey
.

Founded near the end of the 4th century BC by

Seleucus I Nicator

, one of

Alexander the Great

‘s generals, Antioch eventually rivaled

Alexandria

as the chief city of the Near East and was a cradle of

gentile

Christianity

.

It was one of the four cities of the

S-y-ri-an tetrapolis

. Its residents were known as Antiochenes.

//

 Geography

Two routes from the

Mediterranean

, lying through the Orontes gorge and the Beilan Pass, converge

in the plain of the

Antioch Lake

(Balük Geut or El Bahr) and are met there by

1. the road from the Amanic Gates (Baghche Pass) and western

   Commagene

   , which descends the valley of the Kara Su,

2. the roads from eastern Commagene and the Euphratean crossings at

   Samosata

   (Samsat) and Apamea Zeugma (Birejik), which descend the valleys of the Afrin

   and the Kuwaik, and

3. the road from the Euphratean ford at

   Thapsacus
   ,

   which skirts the fringe of the S-y-ri-an steppe. A single route proceeds south

   in the Orontes valley.

 History

 Prehistory

The settlement of Meroe pre-dated Antioch. A shrine of

Anat, called by the

Greeks the “Persian Artemis,” was located here. This site was included in the

eastern suburbs of Antioch. There was a village on the spur of Mount Silpius

named or Iopolis. This name was always adduced as evidence by Antiochenes

(e.g. Libanius

) anxious to affiliate themselves to the Attic

Ionians
–an

eagerness which is illustrated by the Athenian types used on the city’s coins.

Io may have been a small early colony of trading Greeks (Javan).

John

Malalas
mentions also an archaic village, Bottia, in the plain by the

river.

According to most of the writers, this is the city that is mentioned in the

Quran 36:13.

 Foundation

by Seleucus I

Alexander the Great

is said to have camped on the site of Antioch, and

dedicated an altar to

Zeus Bottiaeus

, which lay in the northwest of the future city. This account

is found only in the writings of Libanius, a 4th century AD orator from Antioch,

and may be legend intended to enhance Antioch’s status. But the story is not

unlikely in itself.^[2]

After Alexander’s death in 323 BC, his

generals

divided up the territory he had conquered.

Seleucus I Nicator

won the territory of S-y-ri-a, and he proceeded to found

four “sister cities” in northwestern S-y-ri-a, one of which was Antioch. Like the

other three, Antioch was named by Seleucus for a member of his family. He is

reputed to have built sixteen Antiochs.

Seleucus founded Antioch on a site chosen through ritual means. An

eagle
, the bird

of Zeus
, had been

given a piece of sacrificial meat and the city was founded on the site to which

the eagle carried the offering. He did this in the twelfth year of his reign.

Antioch soon rose above

Seleucia Pieria

to become the S-y-ri-an capital.

 Hellenistic

age

The original city of Seleucus was laid out in imitation of the

grid plan

of

Alexandria

by the architect

Xenarius

. Libanius

describes the first building and arrangement of this city (i. p.

300. 17). The citadel was on Mt. Silpius and the city lay mainly on the low

ground to the north, fringing the river. Two great colonnaded streets

intersected in the centre. Shortly afterwards a second quarter was laid out,

probably on the east and by

Antiochus I

, which, from an expression of

Strabo
, appears

to have been the native, as contrasted with the Greek, town. It was enclosed by

a wall of its own. In the Orontes, north of the city, lay a large island, and on

this

Seleucus II Callinicus

began a third walled “city,” which was finished by

Antiochus III

. A fourth and last quarter was added by

Antiochus IV Epiphanes

(175-164 BC); and thenceforth Antioch was known as

Tetrapolis. From west to east the whole was about 6 km in diameter and

little less from north to south, this area including many large gardens.

The new city was populated by a mix of local settlers that Athenians brought

from the nearby city of Antigonia, Macedonians, and Jews (who were given full

status from the beginning). The total free population of Antioch at its

foundation has been estimated at between 17,000 and 25,000, not including slaves

and native settlers.

During the late Hellenistic period and Early Roman period, Antioch population

reached its peak of over 500,000 inhabitants (estimates vary from 400,000 to

600,000) and was the third largest city in the world after Rome and Alexandria.

By the 4th century, Antioch’s declining population was about 200,000 according

to

Chrysostom

, a figure which again does not include slaves.

About 6 km west and beyond the suburb Heraclea lay the paradise of Daphne, a

park of woods and waters, in the midst of which rose a great temple to the

Pythian Apollo, also founded by Seleucus I and enriched with a cult-statue of

the god, as Musagetes, by

Bryaxis
. A

companion sanctuary of Hecate was constructed underground by

Diocletian
.

The beauty and the lax morals of Daphne were celebrated all over the western

world; and indeed Antioch as a whole shared in both these titles to fame. Its

amenities awoke both the enthusiasm and the scorn of many writers of antiquity.

Antioch became the capital and court-city of the western Seleucid empire

under

Antiochus I

, its counterpart in the east being

Seleucia on the Tigris

; but its paramount importance dates from the battle

of Ancyra (240 BC), which shifted the Seleucid centre of gravity from Asia

Minor, and led indirectly to the rise of

Pergamum

.

The Seleucids reigned from Antioch.

We know little of it in the

Hellenistic period

, apart from

S-y-ri-a
, all our

information coming from authors of the late Roman time. Among its great Greek

buildings we hear only of the theatre, of which substructures still remain on

the flank of Silpius, and of the royal palace, probably situated on the island.

It enjoyed a reputation for letters and the arts (Cicero

pro Archia, 3); but the only names of distinction in these pursuits

during the Seleucid period, that have come down to us, are Apollophanes, the

Stoic, and one Phoebus, a writer on dreams. The mass of the population seems to

have been only superficially

Hellenic

, and to have spoken

Aramaic

in non-official life. The nicknames which they gave to their later

kings were Aramaic; and, except

Apollo
and

Daphne
, the

great divinities of north S-y-ri-a seem to have remained essentially native, such

as the “Persian Artemis” of Meroe and

Atargatis

of

Hierapolis Bambyce

.

The epithet, “Golden,” suggests that the external appearance of Antioch was

impressive, but the city needed constant restoration owing to the

seismic

disturbances
to which the district has always been subjected. The first

great earthquake in recorded history was related by the native chronicler

John

Malalas
. It occurred in 148 BC and did immense damage.

Local politics were turbulent. In the many dissensions of the Seleucid house

the population took sides, and frequently rose in rebellion, for example against

Alexander Balas in 147 BC, and Demetrius II in 129 BC. The latter, enlisting a

body of Jews, punished his capital with fire and sword. In the last struggles of

the Seleucid house, Antioch turned against its feeble rulers, invited

Tigranes of Armenia

to occupy the city in 83 BC, tried to unseat Antiochus

XIII in 65 BC, and petitioned Rome against his restoration in the following

year. Its wish prevailed, and it passed with S-y-ri-a to the

Roman Republic

in 64 BC, but remained a civitas libera.

 Roman

period

The Roman emperors favoured the city from the first, seeing it as a more

suitable capital for the eastern part of the empire than Alexandria could be,

because of the isolated position of Egypt. To a certain extent they tried to

make it an eastern Rome.

Julius Caesar

visited it in 47 BC, and confirmed its freedom. A great temple

to Jupiter Capitolinus rose on Silpius, probably at the insistence of

Octavian
,

whose cause the city had espoused. A

forum

of Roman type was laid out.

Tiberius

built two long colonnades on the south towards Silpius.

Agrippa

and Tiberius enlarged the theatre, and

Trajan
finished

their work.

Antoninus Pius

paved the great east to west artery with granite. A circus,

other colonnades and great numbers of baths were built, and new

aqueducts

to supply them bore the names of Caesars, the finest being the

work of Hadrian
.

The Roman client, King Herod, erected a long

stoa on the

east, and

Agrippa

encouraged the growth of a new suburb south of this.

At Antioch

Germanicus

died in 19 AD, and his body was burnt in the forum.

An earthquake that shook Antioch in AD 37 caused the emperor

Caligula
to

send two senators to report on the condition of the city. Another quake followed

in the next reign.

Titus
set up

the

Cherubim

, captured from the

Jewish temple

, over one of the gates.

In 115, during Trajan

‘s sojourn in the place with his army of Parthia, the whole site was

convulsed by an earthquake, the landscape altered, and the emperor himself

forced to take shelter in the circus for several days. He and his successor

restored the city.

Commodus

had

Olympic games

celebrated at Antioch.

Edward Gibbon

wrote:

Fashion was the only law, pleasure the only pursuit, and the splendour of

dress and furniture was the only distinction of the citizens of Antioch. The

arts of luxury were honoured, the serious and manly virtues were the subject

of ridicule, and the contempt for female modesty and reverent age announced

the universal corruption of the capital of the East.

In 256 the town was suddenly raided by the Persians, who slew many in the

theatre.

In 526, after minor shocks, the calamity returned in a terrible form; the

octagonal cathedral which had been erected by the emperor

Constantius II

suffered and thousands of lives were lost, largely those of

Christians gathered to a great church assembly. Especially terrific earthquakes

on

November

29
, 528

and

October 31
,

588 are also

recorded.

 Late

Antiquity

 Christianity

Antioch was a chief center of early Christianity. The city had a large

population of Jewish origin in a quarter called the

Kerateion
,

and so attracted the earliest missionaries.

Evangelized, among others, by

Peter

himself, according to the tradition upon which the

Antiochene patriarchate

still rests its claim for primacy,

and certainly later

by Barnabas

and Paul

during Paul’s first missionary journey. Its converts were the first to

be called Christians.

This is not to be confused with

Antioch

in Pisidia

, to which the early missionaries later travelled.

The population was estimated by

Chrysostom

at about 100,000 people at the time of

Theodosius I

. Between 252 and 300, ten assemblies of the church were held at

Antioch and it became the seat of one of the four original

patriarchates

, along with

Jerusalem
,

Alexandria
,

and Rome
(see

Pentarchy

). Today Antioch remains the seat of a

patriarchate

of the

Oriental Orthodox

churches. One of the canonical

Eastern Orthodox

churches is still called the

Antiochian Orthodox Church

, although it moved its headquarters from Antioch

to Damascus
,

S-y-ri-a, several centuries ago (see

list of Patriarchs of Antioch

), and its prime bishop retains the title

“Patriarch of Antioch,” somewhat analogous to the manner in which several Popes,

heads of the

Roman Catholic Church

remained “Bishop of Rome” even while residing in

Avignon, France in the 14th century.

During the 4th century, Antioch was one of the three most important cities in

the eastern Roman empire (along with Alexandria and Constantinople), which led

to it being recognized as the seat of one of the five early Christian

patriarchates (see

Pentarchy

).

 The

age of Julian

When

the emperor Julian

visited in 362 on a detour to Persia, he had high hopes

for Antioch, regarding it as a rival to the imperial capital of

Constantinople

. Antioch had a mixed pagan and Christian population, which

Ammianus Marcellinus

implies lived quite harmoniously together. However

Julian’s visit began ominously as it coincided with a lament for

Adonis
, the

doomed lover of

Aphrodite
.

Thus, Ammianus wrote, the emperor and his soldiers entered the city not to the

sound of cheers but to wailing and screaming.

Not long after, the Christian population railed at Julian for his favour to

Jewish and pagan rites, and, outraged by the closing of its great church of

Constantine

, burned down the temple of

Apollo
in

Daphne. Another version of the story had it that the chief priest of the temple

accidentally set the temple alight because he had fallen asleep after lighting a

candle. In any case Julian had the man

tortured
for

negligence (for either allowing the Christians to burn the temple or for burning

it himself), confiscated Christian property and berated the pagan Antiochenes

for their impiety.

Julian found much else about which to criticize the Antiochenes. Julian had

wanted the empire’s cities to be more self-managing, as they had been some

200 years before

. However Antioch’s

city councilmen

showed themselves unwilling to shore up Antioch’s food

shortage with their own resources, so dependent were they on the emperor.

Ammianus wrote that the councilmen shirked their duties by bribing unwitting men

in the marketplace to do the job for them.

The city’s impiety to the old religion was clear to Julian when he attended

the city’s annual feast of Apollo. To his surprise and dismay the only

Antiochene present was an old priest clutching a

chicken
.

The Antiochenes in turn hated Julian for worsening the food shortage with the

burden of his billeted

troops, wrote

Ammianus

. The soldiers were often to be found gorged on sacrificial meat,

making a drunken nuisance of themselves on the streets while Antioch’s hungry

citizens looked on in disgust. The Christian Antiochenes and Julian’s pagan

Gallic
soldiers

also never quite saw eye to eye.

Even Julian’s piety was distasteful to the Antiochenes retaining the old

faith. Julian’s brand of paganism was very much unique to himself, with little

support outside the most educated

Neoplatonist

circles. The irony of Julian’s enthusiasm for large scale

animal sacrifice

could not have escaped the hungry Antiochenes. Julian

gained no admiration for his personal involvement in the sacrifices, only the

nickname axeman, wrote Ammianus.

The emperor’s high-handed, severe methods and his rigid administration

prompted Antiochene

lampoons

about, among other things, Julian’s unfashionably

pointed beard
.

 Valens

and after

Julian’s successor,

Valens
, who

endowed Antioch with a new forum, including a statue of Valentinian on a central

column, reopened the great church of Constantine, which stood till the Persian

sack in 538 by

Chosroes
.

In 387, there was a great sedition caused by a new tax levied by order of

Theodosius I

, and the city was punished by the loss of its metropolitan

status.

Justinian I

, who renamed it Theopolis (“City of God”), restored many

of its public buildings after the

great earthquake of 526

, whose destructive work was completed by the Persian

king, Khosrau

I
, twelve years later. Antioch lost as many as 300,000 people. Justinian I

made an effort to revive it, and

Procopius

describes his repairing of the walls; but its glory was past.

Antioch gave its name to a

certain school

of Christian thought, distinguished by literal interpretation

of the Scriptures and insistence on the human limitations of

Jesus
.

Diodorus of Tarsus

and

Theodore of Mopsuestia

were the leaders of this school. The principal local

saint was

Simeon Stylites

, who lived an extremely ascetic life atop a pillar for 40

years some 65 km east of Antioch. His body was brought to the city and buried in

a building erected under the emperor

Leo

.

 Arab

period

In 637, during the reign of the Byzantine emperor

Heraclius
,

Antioch was conquered by the Arabs in the caliphate of al-Rashidun

during the

Battle of Iron Bridge

. The city became known in Arabic as أنطاكيّة (Antākiyyah).

Since the

Umayyad dynasty

was unable to penetrate the

Anatolian

plateau, Antioch found itself on the frontline of the conflicts between two

hostile empires during the next 350 years, so that the city went into a

precipitous decline.

In 969, the city was recovered for the

Byzantine

Emperor

Nicephorus II

Phocas by Michael Burza and Peter the Eunuch. In 1078,

Armenians seized power until the

Seljuk Turks

captured Antioch in 1084, but held it only fourteen years

before the Crusaders arrived.

 Crusader

era

The Crusaders’

Siege of Antioch

conquered the city, but caused significant damage during

the First Crusade

. Although it contained a large Christian population, it was

ultimately betrayed by Islamic allies of

Bohemund

, prince of Taranto who, following the defeat of the Turkish

garrison, became its overlord. It remained the capital of the Latin

Principality of Antioch

for nearly two centuries. It fell at last to the

Egyptian

Mamluk

Sultan Baibars

, in 1268, after

another siege

. Baibars proceeded to massacre the Christian population.^[12]

In addition to the ravages of war, the city’s port became inaccessible to large

ships due to the accumulation of sand in the Orontes river bed. As a result,

Antioch never recovered as a major city, with much of its former role falling to

the port city of

Alexandretta

(Iskenderun).

 Archaeology

Few traces of the once great Roman city are visible today aside from the

massive fortification walls that snake up the mountains to the east of the

modern city, several aqueducts, and the

Church of St Peter

(St Peter’s Cave Church, Cave-Church of St. Peter), said

to be a meeting place of an early Christian community.

The majority of the Roman city lies buried beneath deep sediments from the

Orontes River, or has been obscured by recent construction.

Between 1932 and 1939, archaeological excavations of Antioch were undertaken

under the direction of the “Committee for the Excavation of Antioch and Its

Vicinity,” which was made up of representatives from the

Louvre Museum

, the

Baltimore Museum of Art

, the

Worcester Art Museum

,

Princeton University

, and later (1936) also the

Fogg Art Museum

at

Harvard University

and its affiliate

Dumbarton Oaks

.

The excavation team failed to find the major buildings they hoped to unearth,

including Constantine’s Great Octagonal Church or the imperial palace. However,

a great accomplishment of the expedition was the discovery of high-quality Roman

mosaics from villas and baths in Antioch, Daphne and Seleucia. One mosaic

includes a border that depicts a walk from Antioch to Daphne, showing many

ancient buildings along the way. The mosaics are now displayed in the Hatay

Archaeological Museum in

Antakya
and

in the museums of the sponsoring institutions.

A statue in the

Vatican

and a number of figurines and statuettes perpetuate the type of its

great patron goddess and civic symbol, the

Tyche
(Fortune)

of Antioch – a majestic seated figure, crowned with the ramparts of Antioch’s

walls, with the river Orontes as a youth swimming under her feet.

In recent years, what remains of the Roman and late antique city have

suffered severe damage as a result of construction related to the expansion of

Antakya. In the 1960s, the last surviving Roman bridge was demolished to make

way for a modern two-lane bridge. The northern edge of Antakya has been growing rapidly over

recent years, and this construction has begun to expose large portions of the

ancient city, which are frequently bulldozed and rarely protected by the local

museum.