ODESSOS in THRACE 281BC Great God Derzelas & Apollo Ancient Greek Coin i51753

Item: i51753

Authentic Ancient

Coin of:

Greek city of

 Bronze 11mm (1.35 grams) Struck circa 281-188 B.C.

Reference: Sear 1680

Laureate head of
Apollo
right.

OΔHΣITΩN, The Great God Derzelas
reclining left, holding phiale and cornucopia, thyrsos
before; above, monogram.

Odessos was a colony of Miletus.

You are bidding on the exact item pictured,

Authenticity.

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.

Derzelas (Darzalas) was a
Dacian
or
Thracian

chthonic
god of abundance and the underworld,
health and human spirit’s vitality, probably related with gods such as
Hades
,
Zalmoxis
,
Gebeleizis
.

Darzalas was the Great God of
Hellenistic

Odessos
(modern
Varna
) and was frequently depicted on its
coinage
from the 3rd century BCE to the 3rd
century CE and portrayed in numerous
terra cotta
figurines, as well as in a rare 4th
century BC lead one (photo),
found in the city. Darzalas was often
depicted
in
himation
, holding
cornucopiae
with
altars
by his side. There was a temple
dedicated to him with a cult statue, and games (Darzaleia)
were held in his honor every five years, possibly attended by
Gordian III
in 238 AD.

Another temple dedicated to Derzelas was built at
Histria (Sinoe)
– a Greek colony, on the shore
of the Black Sea
in the 3rd century BC.

Darzalas Peak
on
Trinity Peninsula
in
Antarctica
is named after the god.

A
thyrsus or thyrsos was a wand or staff of giant fennel (Ferula
communis) covered with
ivy
vines and leaves, sometimes wound with
taeniae
and always topped with a

pine
cone
.

Symbolism

The thyrsus, associated with
Dionysus
(or Bacchus) and his followers, the
Satyrs
and
Maenads
, is a symbol of
prosperity
,
fertility
,
hedonism
, and pleasure/enjoyment in general. It
has been suggested that this was specifically a fertility
phallus
, with the fennel representing the shaft
of the penis and the pine cone representing the “seed” issuing forth. The
thyrsus was tossed in the Bacchic dance:

Pentheus: The thyrsus— in my right hand shall I hold it?

Or thus am I more like a Bacchanal?

Dionysus: In thy right hand, and with thy right foot raise it”.

Sometimes the thyrsus was displayed in conjunction with a
kantharos
wine cup, another symbol of Dionysus,
forming a male-and-female combination like that of the royal scepter and orb.

Use

In
Greek religion
, the staff was carried by the
votaries
of Dionysus.
Euripides
wrote that
honey
dripped from the thyrsos staves that the
Bacchic maenads
carried. The thyrsus was a sacred
instrument at religious
rituals
and

fêtes.

The fabulous history of Bacchus relates that he converted the thyrsi carried
by himself and his followers into dangerous weapons, by concealing an iron point
in the head of leaves. Hence his thyrsus is called “a spear enveloped in
vine-leaves”, and its point was thought to incite to madness.

Literature

In the Iliad
,
Diomedes
, one of the leading warriors of the
Achaeans
, mentions the thyrsus while speaking
to
Glaucus
, one of the
Lycian
commanders in the

Trojan army, about
Lycurgus
, the king of
Scyros
:

He it was that/drove the nursing women who were in charge/of frenzied
Bacchus through the land of Nysa,/and they flung their thyrsi on the
ground as/murderous Lycurgus beat them with his ox-/goad. (Iliad,
Book VI.132-37)

The thyrsus is explicitly attributed to Dionysus in
Euripides
‘s play
The Bacchae
as part of the costume of the
Dionysian cult.

…To raise my Bacchic shout, and clothe all who respond/ In fawnskin
habits, and put my thyrsus in their hands–/ The weapon wreathed with
ivy-shoots…” Euripides also writes, “There’s a brute wildness in the
fennel-wands—Reverence it well.” (The Bacchae and Other Plays, trans.
by Philip Vellacott, Penguin, 1954.)

Plato
writes in
Phaedo
:

I conceive that the founders of the mysteries had a real meaning and were
not mere triflers when they intimated in a figure long ago that he who
passes unsanctified and uninitiated into the world below will live in a
slough, but that he who arrives there after initiation and purification will
dwell with the gods. For “many,” as they say in the mysteries, “are the
thyrsus bearers, but few are the mystics,”–meaning, as I interpret the
words, the true philosophers.

In Part II of
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
‘s
Faust
,
Mephistopheles
tries to catch a
Lamia
, only to find out that she is an
illusion:

Well, then, a tall one I will catch…/And now a thyrsus-pole I
snatch!/Only a pine-cone as its head. (7775-7777)

Robert Browning
mentions the thyrsus in passing
in The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St Praxed’s Church, as the dying bishop
confuses Christian piety with classical extravagance:

The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me,/Those
Pans
and
nymphs
ye wot of, and perchance/Some
tripod
, thrysus, with a vase or so,
(56-58)

The region of ancient
Thrace
was populated by
Thracians
by 1000 BCE.
Miletian

Greeks
founded the apoikia (trading
post) of Odessòs towards the end of the 7th century BC (the earliest
Greek archaeological material is dated 600–575 BCE), or, according to
Pseudo-Scymnus
, in the time of
Astyages
(here, usually 572–570 BCE is
suggested), within an earlier Thracian settlement. The name Odessos was
pre-Greek, arguably of
Carian
origin. A member of the Pontic
Pentapolis
, Odessos was a mixed
community—contact zone between the
Ionian

Greeks
and the
Thracian
tribes (Getae,
Krobyzoi
,
Terizi
) of the
hinterland
. Excavations at nearby Thracian
sites have shown uninterrupted occupation from the 7th to the 4th century and
close commercial relations with the colony. The Greek alphabet has been applied
to inscriptions in
Thracian
since at least the 5th century BCE;
the city worshipped a Thracian great god whose cult survived well into the
Roman
period.

Odessos was included in the assessment of the
Delian league
of 425 BCE. In 339 BCE, it was
unsuccessfully besieged by
Philip II
(priests of the Getae persuaded him
to conclude a treaty) but surrendered to
Alexander the Great
in 335 BCE, and was later
ruled by his diadochus

Lysimachus
, against whom it rebelled in 313 BC
as part of a coalition with other Pontic cities and the Getae. The Roman city,
Odessus, first included into the Praefectura orae maritimae and
then in 15 CE annexed to the province of
Moesia
(later Moesia Inferior), covered
47 hectares in present-day central Varna and had prominent public baths,
Thermae
, erected in the late 2nd century AD,
now the largest Roman remains in Bulgaria (the building was 100 m (328.08 ft)
wide, 70 m (229.66 ft) long, and 25 m (82.02 ft) high) and fourth-largest known
Roman baths in Europe. Major athletic games were held every five years, possibly
attended by
Gordian III
in 238 CE.

Odessus was an early
Christian
centre, as testified by ruins of ten
early basilicas, a
monophysite
monastery, and indications that one
of the
Seventy Disciples
,
Ampliatus
, follower of
Saint Andrew
(who, according to the
Bulgarian Orthodox Church
legend, preached in
the city in 56 CE), served as bishop there. In 6th-century CE imperial
documents, it was referred to as “holiest city,” sacratissima civitas. In
442 CE, a peace treaty between
Theodosius II
and
Attila
was done at Odessus. In 513, it became a
focal point of the
Vitalian
revolt. In 536,
Justinian I
made it the seat of the
Quaestura exercitus
ruled by a prefect of
Scythia or quaestor Justinianus and including Lower Moesia,
Scythia
, Caria, the
Aegean Islands
and Cyprus; later, the military
camp outside Odessus was the seat of another senior Roman commander, magister
militum per Thracias.

It has been suggested that the 681 peace treaty with the
Byzantine Empire
that established the new
Bulgarian state was concluded at Varna and the first Bulgarian capital south of
the Danube may have been provisionally located in its vicinity—possibly in an
ancient city near Lake Varna’s north shore named Theodorias (Θεοδωριάς) by
Justinian I—before it moved to
Pliska
70 kilometres (43 miles) to the west.
Asparukh fortified the Varna river lowland by a rampart against a possible
Byzantine landing; the Asparuhov val (Asparukh’s Wall) is still standing.
Numerous 7th-century
Bulgar
settlements have been excavated across
the city and further west; the Varna lakes north shores, of all regions, were
arguably most densely populated by Bulgars. It has been suggested that Asparukh
was aware of the importance of the Roman military camp (campus tribunalis)
established by Justinian I outside Odessus and considered it (or its remnants)
as the legitimate seat of power for both Lower Moesia and Scythia.