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Greek city of Hieropolis-Kastabala in Cilicia
Bronze 20mm (5.2 grams) Struck circa 200-0 B.C.
Reference: SNG Levante 1563-1565; SNG Paris 2219-2222.
Pedigree / Provenance: Ex CNG 7/16/2001 Lot 63396
Turreted head of Tyche right; monogram to left
IEPOΠOΛITΩN TΩΝ ΠΡΟC TΩI ΠΥΡΑΜΩI, Goddess seated left on throne, holding patera, under throne, eagle standing left.
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Tyche (Greek for luck; the Roman equivalent was Fortuna) was the presiding tutelary deity that governed the fortune and prosperity of a city, its destiny. Increasingly during the Hellenistic period, cities had their own specific iconic version of Tyche, wearing a mural crown (a crown like the walls of the city).
 The Greek historian Polybius believed that when no cause can be discovered to events such as floods, droughts, frosts or even in politics, then the cause of these events may be fairly attributed to Tyche.
Stylianos Spyridakis concisely expressed Tyche’s appeal in a Hellenistic world of arbitrary violence and unmeaning reverses: “In the turbulent years of the Epigoni of Alexander, an awareness of the instability of human affairs led people to believe that Tyche, the blind mistress of Fortune, governed mankind with an inconstancy which explained the vicissitudes of the time.”
In literature, she might be given various genealogies, as a daughter of Hermes and Aphrodite, or considered as one of the Oceanids, daughters of Oceanus and Tethys, or of Zeus. She was connected with Nemesis and Agathos Daimon (“good spirit”).
She was uniquely venerated at Itanos in Crete, as Tyche Protogeneia, linked with the Athenian Protogeneia (“firstborn”), daughter of Erechtheus, whose self-sacrifice saved the city.
She had temples at Caesarea Maritima, Antioch, Alexandria and Constantinople. In Alexandria the Tychaeon, the temple of Tyche, was described by Libanius as one of the most magnificent of the entire Hellenistic world.
Tyche appears on many coins of the Hellenistic period in the three centuries before the Christian era, especially from cities in the Aegean. Unpredictable turns of fortune drive the complicated plotlines of Hellenistic romances, such as Leucippe and Clitophon or Daphnis and Chloe. She experienced a resurgence in another era of uneasy change, the final days of publicly sanctioned Paganism, between the late-fourth-century emperors Julian and Theodosius I who definitively closed the temples. The effectiveness of her capricious power even achieved respectability in philosophical circles during that generation, though among poets it was a commonplace to revile her for a fickle harlot.
In medieval art, she was depicted as carrying a cornucopia, an emblematic ship’s rudder, and the wheel of fortune, or she may stand on the wheel, presiding over the entire circle of fate.
The constellation of Virgo is sometimes identified as the heavenly figure of Tyche, as well as other goddesses such as Demeter and Astraea.
River-gods were represented often on Greek, Greek Imperial (Roman Provincial) and Roman Imperial coins, as a personification of a river that flowed through that area, as it was an important feature of a city. The coins of the Roman Republic do not have any representations of river gods. Some river gods represented on ancient coins were that of the Tiber, Nile, Danube and many more. River gods on ancient Roman coins are most often depicted on Roman provincial issues (another term for Greek Imperial). There are also Greek coins that depicted personifications of river-gods usually as the head of that god. On Greek Imperial coins, the river-god is usually depicted reclining, holding reeds, and leaning on over-turned jug from which water flows.
Castabala (Greek: Καστάβαλα), also known as Hieropolis and Hierapolis [ad Pyramum] (Ίεράπολις) was a city in Cilicia (modern southern Turkey), near the Ceyhan River (ancient Pyramus). During Late Antiquity, the bishopric was a suffragan to Anazarbus, the metropolis of the province of Cilicia Secunda. The names of seven of its residential bishops are known. No longer a residential bishopric, Castabala is listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see.
Today, the Turkish town of Kırmıtlı, in the Osmaniye district of Osmaniye Province, sits atop the ruins of the ancient city.
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