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Greek city of <font color="#000000" ioniaKebren in <font color="#000000" ioniaTroas
Silver Obol 11mm (0.50 grams) Struck 5th century B.C.
Reference: Cf. SNG Ashmolean 1086 (diobol); SNG Copenhagen –.
Archaic head, ostensibly of Apollo left.
Head of ram left within incuse square.
An inland town, between Ilion and Antandros, Kebren was abandoned at the end of the fourth century when its population was removed to Alexandria Troas.
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 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.
Cebrene (Ancient Greek: Κεβρήνη), also spelled Cebren (Ancient Greek: Κεβρήν), was a ancient Greek city in the middle Skamander valley in the Troad region of Anatolia. According to some scholars, the city’s name was changed to Antiocheia in the Troad (Ancient Greek: Ἀντιόχεια τῆς Τρωάδος) for a period during the 3rd century BCE (see below). Its archaeological remains have been located on Çal Dağ in the forested foothills of Mount Ida (modern Kaz Dağı), approximately 7 km to the south of the course of the Skamander. The site was first identified by the English amateur archaeologist Frank Calvert in 1860.
History
Foundation
The earliest Greek archaeological remains found at Cebren date to the mid-7th and early 6th century BCE and were found together with indigenous pottery, suggesting that to begin with the city was a mixed Greco-Anatolian community. Writing in the early 4th century BCE, Xenophon implies that the population of Cebren ca. 400 BCE still consisted of both Greek and Anatolian elements, indicating that the two ethnic groups co-existed long after the period of Greek colonization. Sources dating to the mid-4th century BCE considered the city an Aeolian Greek foundation, and the historian Ephorus of Cyme claimed that its founders were in fact from his own city, although this statement needs to be treated with some caution, since Ephorus was notorious in antiquity for exaggerating his hometown’s importance. While we cannot ascertain the truth of Ephorus’ statement, we can be sure that the early settlers were Aeolians, since a grave inscription for a citizen of Kebren written in the Aeolic dialect has been found at nearby Gergis.
Classical Period
In the 5th century BCE Cebren was a member of the Delian League and is listed in the Hellespontine district paying a tribute to Athens of 3 Talents from 454/3 down to 425/4, except in 450/49 when it only paid 8,700 drachmas. Following the defeat of Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian War in 404 BCE, Cebren came under the control of Zenis, the tyrant of Dardanus, and his wife Mania who together controlled the Troad on behalf of the Persian satrap Pharnabazos. Cebren was captured by the Spartan commander Dercylidas in 399 BCE, but soon after returned to Persian control. In 360/59, the Greek mercenary commander Charidemus briefly captured the city before being repelled by the Persian satrap Artabazos. At some point in the 4th century BCE Cebren produced coinage depicting a satrap’s head as the obverse type, indicating the city’s close relationship with its Persian overlords. Cebren ceased to exist as an independent city ca. 310 when Antigonus I Monophthalmus founded Antigonia Troas (after 301 BCE renamed Alexandria Troas) and included Cebren in the synoecism.
Antiocheia in the Troad
A rare series of bronze coins display the obverse and reverse types of Cebren (ram’s head/head of Apollo), but bear the legend Ἀντιοχέων (Antiocheōn, ‘(coin of the) Antiocheis’). On the basis of these coins it has been argued, most notably by the French epigrapher Louis Robert, that Cebren was refounded by Antiochus I Soter as Antiocheia in the Troad following Antiochus’ victory over Lysimachus at the Battle of Corupedium in 281 BCE, after which most of western Asia Minor came under his control. Moreover, Robert noted that some of these coins bore the letters B and K and included a club beside the ram’s head: since the club is the typical symbol of the coinage of Birytis, an unlocated city in the Troad, Robert argued that these letters referred to B(irytis) and K(ebren) and were evidence of a synoecism or sympoliteia between the two communities which had produced the new foundation of Antiocheia in the Troad. Robert’s arguments have been repeatedly criticized by the archaeologist John Cook, who could discern no archaeological or numismatic evidence for occupation in the Hellenistic period at the site of Çal Dağ. It should be noted, however, that Cook based these claims on only two days of surface survey at Çal Dağ, and as such definitive answers regarding the settlement history of the site in the 3rd century BCE will have to await a full excavation.
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