Nicopolis ad Istrum
Pseudo-Autonomous City Issue
Bronze 17mm (3.06 grams) circa 150-250 A.D.
Bearded head of Zeus left.
Eagle standing facing on club, one wing spread, head to right; beak in wreath.
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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.
Nicopolis ad Istrum was a
Roman
and Early
Byzantine
town founded by Emperor
Trajan
around
101–106, at the junction of the Iatrus (Yantra)
and the Rositsa
rivers, in memory of his victory over the
Dacians
. Its
ruins are located at the village of
Nikyup
, 20 km north of
Veliko Tarnovo
in northern
Bulgaria
.
The town reached its apogee during the reigns of Trajan,
Hadrian
, the
Antonines
and the
Severan dynasty
.
The classical town was planned according to the orthogonal system. The
network of streets, the forum surrounded by an Ionic colonnade and many
buildings, a two-nave room later turned into a basilica and other public
buildings have been uncovered. The rich architectures and sculptures show a
similarity with those of the ancient towns in Asia Minor. Nicopolis ad Istrum
had issued coins, bearing images of its own public buildings.
In
447 AD
, the town was destroyed by
Attila’s
.
Perhaps it was already abandoned before the early 400s.
In the 6th century, it was rebuilt as a powerful fortress enclosing little more
than military buildings and churches, following a very common trend for the
cities of that century in the Danube area.The largest area of the extensive ruins (21.55 hectares) of the classical
Nicopolis was not reoccupied since the fort covered only one fourth of it (5.75
hectares), in the southeastern corner.
The town became an episcopal centre during the early Byzantine period. It was
finally destroyed by the Avar invasions at the end of the 6th century. A
Bulgarian medieval settlement arose upon its ruins later (10th-14th century).Huns
Nicopolis ad Istrum can be said to have been the birthplace of
Germanic
literary tradition. In the 4th century, the
Gothic
bishop,
missionary and translator
Ulfilas
(Wulfila)
obtained permission from Emperor
Constantius II
to immigrate with his flock of converts to Moesia and settle
near Nicopolis ad Istrum in 347-8.
There, he invented the
Gothic alphabet
and translated the
Bible
from
Greek
to
Gothic
.
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