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Greek city of Leontini in
Sicily
Bronze Trias, Tetrantes or Trionkia 14mm (1.95 grams) Struck circa 405-402
B.C.
Reference: HGC 2, 708; Sear 1118; CNS III, pp. 77-79, nos. 3-3/27; B.M.C. 2.56
ΛEON, Laureate head of Apollo right; behind,
laurel-leaf with berry.
Tripod-lebes with kithara between legs; barleycorn to left and right; in
exergue, three pellets (mark of value).
Founded by Chalkidians from Naxos in 729 B.C., Leontinoi produced no coinage in
the Archaic period. In the early part of the 5th Century B.C. the city was
under the rule of the Gelan and the Syracusan tyrants, but in 466 B.C. it
regained its independence. Enjoyed considerable prosperity until 422 B.C. when
it was reduced to a state of dependency on Syracuse.
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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.
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.
The ancient city was founded as Leontini by colonists from
Naxos
in 729 BC, itself a
Chalcidian
colony
established five years earlier.
It is virtually the only
Greek
settlement in Sicily not located on the
coast, being some 6 miles inland. The site, originally held by the
Sicels
, was seized by the Greeks owing to its
command of the fertile plain to the north. The city was reduced to subject
status in 498 BC by
Hippocrates of Gela
, who made his ally
Aenesidemus
its tyrant. In 476 BC
Hieron of Syracuse
moved the inhabitants from
Catana
and Naxos to Leontini.
Later on, the city of Leontini regained its independence. However, as part of
the inhabitants’ efforts to retain that independence, they sought the
intervention of Athens
. It was mainly the eloquence of
Gorgias
of Leontini which led to the abortive
Athenian expedition of 427 BC.
In 422 BC Syracuse supported the oligarchs against the people and received
the oligarchs as citizens, the city of Leontini itself being forsaken. This led
to renewed Athenian intervention, at first mainly diplomatic; but the exiles of
Leontini joined the envoys of
Segesta
, in persuading Athens to undertake the
great
Sicilian Expedition
of 415 BC.
After the failure of the Expedition, Leontini became subject to Syracuse once
more. The city’s independence was guaranteed by the treaty of 405 BC between
Dionysius
and the
Carthaginians
, but lost again shortly after.
The city was finally stormed by
Marcus Claudius Marcellus
in 214 BC.
By Roman times it seems to have been of little importance. It was destroyed
by the
Saracens
in 848 AD, and almost totally ruined
by the
earthquake of 1693
. From the earthquake to
about the middle of the 20th century, Lentini was regarded by travel writers as
a malarial stop-over to Syracuse of minor historical importance.
The ancient city is described by
Polybius
as lying in a valley between two
hills, and facing north. On the western side of this valley ran a river with a
row of houses on its western bank under the hill. At each end was a gate, the
northern gate leading to the plain, the southern, at the upper end, leading to
Syracuse. There was an acropolis on each side of the valley, lying between
precipitous hills with flat tops, over which buildings had extended. The eastern
hill still has the remains of a strongly fortified medieval castle, in which
some writers are inclined (though wrongly) to recognize portions of Greek
masonry.
Excavations were made in 1899 in one of the ravines in a Sicel necropolis of
the third period—explorations in the various Greek cemeteries resulted in the
discovery of some fine bronzes, notably a fine bronze lebes, now in the Berlin
museum.
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