Lysimacheia in Thrace 309BC RARE Ancient Greek Coin Athena Grain wreath i47474

Item: i47474

Authentic Ancient

Coin of:

Greek city of

Thrace
Bronze 10mm (1.29 grams) Struck circa 309-220 B.C.
Reference: SNG Copenhagen 921
Helmeted head of Athena right.
ΛY within grain-wreath.

Founded by Lysimachos in 309 B.C., close to the site of Kardia which he had
destroyed. This city became the principal residence and European mint of the King of
Thrace.

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Authenticity.

Athena
or Athene (Latin:

Minerva
),
also referred to as Pallas Athena, is the goddess of war, civilization,
wisdom, strength, strategy, crafts, justice and skill in
Greek mythology
.
Minerva
,
Athena’s Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is also a shrewd
companion of heroes

and the goddess

of heroic

endeavour. She is the
virgin

patron of Athens
.
The Athenians built the
Parthenon

on the Acropolis of her namesake city, Athens, in her honour (Athena Parthenos).
Athena’s cult as the patron of Athens seems to have existed from the earliest
times and was so persistent that archaic myths about her were recast to adapt to
cultural changes. In her role as a protector of the city (polis),
many people throughout the Greek world worshiped Athena as Athena Polias
(“Athena of the city”).
Athens

and Athena bear etymologically connected names.

Thrace (demonym Thracian

/
ənθreɪʃⁱˈ/;
Bulgarian
:
Тракия, Trakiya,
Greek
: Θράκη,
Thráki,
Turkish
:
Trakya) is a historical and geographic area in southeast
Europe
. As a geographical concept, Thrace
designates a region bounded by the
Balkan Mountains
on the north,
Rhodope Mountains
and the
Aegean Sea
on the south, and by the
Black Sea
and the
Sea of Marmara
on the east. The areas it
comprises are southeastern
Bulgaria
(Northern
Thrace), northeastern
Greece
(Western
Thrace), and the European part of
Turkey
(Eastern
Thrace). The biggest part of Thrace is part of present-day Bulgaria.
In Turkey, it is also called
Rumelia
. The name comes from the
Thracians
, an ancient
Indo-European
people inhabiting Southeastern
Europe.

The historical boundaries of Thrace have varied. Noteworthy is the fact that,
at an early date, the
ancient Greeks
employed the term “Thrace” to
refer to all of the territory which lay north of
Thessaly
inhabited by the
Thracians
, a region which “had no definite
boundaries” and to which other regions (like
Macedonia
and even
Scythia
) were added. In one ancient Greek
source, the very Earth is divided into “Asia, Libya, Europa and Thracia”. As the
knowledge of world geography of the Greeks broadened, the term came to be more
restricted in its application: Thrace designated the lands bordered by the
Danube
on the north, by the Euxine Sea (Black
Sea) on the east, by northern
Macedonia
in the south and by the
Illyrian
lands (i.e.
Illyria
) to the west. This largely coincided
with the Thracian
Odrysian kingdom
, whose borders varied in time.
During this time, specifically after the Macedonian conquest, the region’s old
border with Macedonia was shifted from the
Struma River
to the
Mesta River
. This usage lasted until the Roman
conquest. Henceforth, (classical) Thrace referred only to the tract of land
largely covering the same extent of space as the modern geographical region. In
its early period, the
Roman province of Thrace
was of this extent,
but after the administrative reforms of the late 3rd century, Thracia’s much
reduced territory became the six small provinces which constituted the
Diocese of Thrace
. The medieval
Byzantine

theme
of
Thrace
contained only what today is
Eastern Thrace
.

The largest cities of Thrace are:
İstanbul
(European side),
Plovdiv
,
Burgas
,
Stara Zagora
,
Haskovo
,
Edirne
,
Çorlu
and
Tekirdag
.

Most of the Bulgarian and Greek population are Christians, while most of the
Turkish inhabitants of Thrace are Muslims.

Thrace in
ancient Greek mythology

Ancient Greek mythology
provides them with a
mythical ancestor, named
Thrax
, son of the war-god

Ares, who was said to reside in Thrace. The Thracians appear in
Homer
‘s
Iliad
as

Trojan allies, led by
Acamas
and
Peiros
. Later in the Iliad,
Rhesus
, another Thracian king, makes an
appearance. Cisseus
, father-in-law to the Trojan elder
Antenor
, is also given as a Thracian king.
Homeric Thrace was vaguely defined, and stretched from the River
Axios
in the west to the
Hellespont
and
Black Sea
in the east. The
Catalogue of Ships
mentions three separate
contingents from Thrace: Thracians led by Acamas and Peiros, from
Aenus
;
Cicones
led by
Euphemus
, from southern Thrace, near
Ismaros
; and from the city of
Sestus
, on the Thracian (northern) side of the
Hellespont, which formed part of the contingent led by
Asius
. Greek mythology is replete with Thracian
kings, including
Diomedes
,
Tereus
,
Lycurgus
,
Phineus
,
Tegyrius
,
Eumolpus
,
Polymnestor
,
Poltys
, and
Oeagrus
(father of
Orpheus
). In addition to the tribe that Homer
calls Thracians, ancient Thrace was home to numerous other tribes, such as the
Edones
,
Bisaltae
,
Cicones
, and
Bistones
.

Thrace is also mentioned in Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the episode of
Philomela
, Procne, and
Tereus
. Tereus, the King of Thrace, lusts after
his sister-in-law, Philomela. He kidnaps her, holds her captive, rapes her, and
cuts out her tongue. Philomela manages to get free, however. She and her sister,
Procne, plot to get revenge, by killing Itys (son of Tereus and Procne) and
serving him to his father for dinner. At the end of the myth, all three turn
into birds—Procne, a swallow; Philomela, a nightingale; and Tereus, a
hoopoe
.

 History

Ancient history

Thracian Tomb of Kazanlak
 

The indigenous population of Thrace was a people called the
Thracians
, divided into numerous tribal groups.
Thracian troops were known to accompany neighboring ruler
Alexander the Great
when he crossed the
Hellespont
which abuts Thrace, and took on the
Persian Empire
of the day.

The Thracians did not describe themselves as such and Thrace and
Thracians are simply the names given them by the Greeks.

Divided into separate tribes, the Thracians did not manage to form a lasting
political organization until the
Odrysian state
was founded in the 4th century
BC. Like Illyrians
, Thracian tribes of the mountainous
regions fostered a locally ruled warrior tradition, while the tribes based in
the plains were purportedly more peaceable. Recently discovered funeral mounds
in Bulgaria suggest that Thracian kings did rule regions of Thrace with distinct
Thracian national identity.

During this period, a subculture of
celibate

ascetics
called the
Ctistae
lived in Thrace, where they served as
philosophers, priests and prophets.

Medieval history

By the mid 5th century, as the Roman Empire began to crumble, Thracia fell
from the authority of Rome and into the hands of Germanic tribal rulers. With
the fall of Rome, Thracia turned into a battleground territory for the better
part of the next 1,000 years. The eastern successor of the
Roman Empire
in the Balkans, the
Byzantine Empire
, retained control over Thrace
until the 8th century when the northern half of the entire region was
incorporated into the
First Bulgarian Empire
. Byzantium regained
Thrace in the late 10th century and administered it as a
theme
, until the Bulgarians regained
control of the northern half at the end of the 12th century. Throughout the 13th
century and the first half of the 14th century, the region was changing in the
hands of the Bulgarian and the Byzantine Empire(excl. Constantinopole). In 1265
the area suffered a Mongol raid from the
Golden Horde
, led by
Nogai Khan
. In 1352, the
Ottoman

Turks
conducted their first incursion into the
region subduing it completely within a matter of two decades and occupying it
for five centuries.

Modern history

With the
Congress of Berlin
in 1878, Northern Thrace was
incorporated into the semi-autonomous Ottoman province of
Eastern Rumelia
, which united with Bulgaria in
1885. The rest of Thrace was divided among Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey at the
beginning of the 20th century, following the
Balkan Wars
,
World War I
and the
Greco-Turkish War
. Today Thracian is a
strong regional identity in Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria and other neighbouring
countries.

Famous Thracians and people from Thrace

• Mehmed II

  Ottoman
  Sultan, born at
  Edirne
  in Thrace; he was the Sultan who
  conquered Constantinople, marking the end of the Middle Ages.

• Bayezid II
  Ottoman Sultan
• Spartacus
  was a Thracian auxiliary soldier
  in the Roman army
  who deserted but was captured
  and then enslaved by the Romans. He led a large slave uprising in what is
  now Italy in 73–71 BC. His army of escaped
  gladiators
  and slaves defeated several
  Roman legions
  in what is known as the
  Third Servile War
  .
• Belisaurius
  , one of the most successful
  Generals of the
  Roman Empire
  , was born in the borderlands
  between Thrace and
  Illyria
  .
• In
  Ancient Greek mythology
  ,
  Orpheus
  was the chief representative of the
  art of song and playing the
  lyre
  .
• Democritus
  was a Greek philosopher and
  mathematician from
  Abdera, Thrace
  (c. 460–370 BC.) His main
  contribution is the
  atomic theory
  , the belief that all matter
  is made up of various imperishable indivisible elements which he called
  atoms
  .
• Herodicus
  was a Greek physician of the
  fifth century BC who is considered the founder of
  sports medicine
  . He is believed to have
  been one of
  Hippocrates’
  tutors.
• Protagoras
  was a Greek philosopher from
  Abdera, Thrace
  (c. 490–420 BC.) An expert
  in rhetorics
  and subjects connected to virtue
  and political life, often regarded as the first
  sophist
  . He is known primarily for three
  claims (1) that man is the measure of all things, often interpreted as a
  sort of
  moral relativism
  , (2) that he could make
  the “worse (or weaker) argument appear the better (or stronger)” (see
  Sophism
  ) and (3) that one could not tell if
  the gods existed or not (see
  Agnosticism
  ).

• A number of
  Roman emperors
  of the 3rd-5th century were
  of Thraco-Roman
  backgrounds (Maximinus
  Thrax,
  Licinius
  ,
  Galerius
  ,
  Aureolus
  ,
  Leo the Thracian
  , etc.). These emperors
  were elevated via a military career, from the condition of common soldiers
  in one of the
  Roman legions
  to the foremost positions of
  political power
  .