GOMPHI / PHILIPPOPOLIS Thessaly Rare 300BC Hera Zeus Ancient Greek Coin i45250

Item: i45250

Authentic Ancient

Coin of:

Greek city of
Gomphi / Philippopolis
in

Thessaly


Bronze 17mm (5.46 grams) Struck circa 300 B.C.
Reference: Sear 2083; B.M.C. 7.2
Head of Hera three-quarter face to right, wearing stephanos.
ΛΟΜΦ, Zeus Akraios seated left on rock, holding
scepter; thunderbolt in field to left.

A strong fortress commandint hte
chief pass from Thessaly to Epeiros, Gopmhi was renamed Philippopolis by Philip
II of Macedon, but later reverted to its old name. Nearby stood a famous temple,
dedicated to Zeus Akraios.

You are bidding on the exact item pictured,

Authenticity.

Hera was the wife and
one of three sisters of Zeus
in the
Olympian pantheon
of
Greek mythology
and
religion
. Her chief function was as the goddess
of women and marriage. Her counterpart in the
religion of ancient Rome
was
Juno
. The
cow
and the
peacock
were sacred to her. Hera’s mother was
Rhea
and her father
Cronus
.

Portrayed
as majestic and solemn, often enthroned, and crowned with the
polos
(a high cylindrical crown worn by
several of the Great Goddesses
), Hera may bear a
pomegranate
in her hand, emblem of fertile
blood and death and a substitute for the narcotic capsule of the
opium
poppy. A scholar of Greek mythology
Walter Burkert
writes in Greek Religion,
“Nevertheless, there are memories of an earlier aniconic representation, as a
pillar in Argos and as a plank in Samos.”

Hera was known for her jealous and vengeful nature, most notably against
Zeus’s lovers and offspring, but also against mortals who crossed her, such as
Pelias
.
Paris
offended her by choosing
Aphrodite

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
.

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.

Gomfoi
(Greek: Γόμφοι, before 1930: Ραψίστα – Rapsistata) is a village and a former
municipality
in the
Trikala regional unit
,
Thessaly
,
Greece
. Since the 2011 local government reform
it is part of the municipality

Pyli, of which it is a municipal unit.^[3]
Population 5,154 (2001). The seat of the municipality was in
Lygaria
. Gomfoi is located in
Thessalian Plain
, near the river
Pamisos
. It is 5 km northeast of
Mouzaki
, and 12 km southwest of the city of
Trikala
. A town existed on the site of present
Gomfoi in
ancient times
, which was renamed Philippoupolis
(Greek: Φιλιππούπολις) during the reign of
Philip II of Macedon
. The area joined
Greece
in 1881.