Item: i107580

Authentic Ancient Coin of:

Greek city of Sigeion in Troas
Bronze 20mm (8.17 grams) Struck circa 355-334 B.C.
Reference: Sear 4144 var. (size); BMC 14-16; SNG München 304-6; SNG von Aulock 1570; SNG Copenhagen 493.
Head of Athena facing slightly right, wearing triple crested helmet and necklace.
ΣIΓE, double-bodied owl standing facing; crescent to right.

Situated close to the entrance of the Hellespont, Sigeion was an Athenian colony and possessed a temple of Athena.

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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.

In Greek mythology, a Little Owl baby (Athene noctua) traditionally represents or accompanies Athena, the virgin goddess of wisdom, or Minerva, her syncretic incarnation in Roman mythology. Because of such association, the bird – often referred to as the “owl of Athena” or the “owl of Minerva” – has been used as a symbol of knowledge, wisdom, perspicacity and erudition throughout the Western world.

Some authors believe that, in early times, Athena was either an owl herself or a bird goddess in general: In the third Book of the Odyssey, she takes the form of a sea-eagle. These authors argue that she dropped her prophylactic owl-mask before she lost her wings. “Athena, by the time she appears in art,” Jane Ellen Harrison had remarked, “has completely shed her animal form, has reduced the shapes she once wore of snake and bird to attributes, but occasionally in black-figure vase-paintings she still appears with wings.

The modern West generally associates owls with wisdom. This link goes back at least as far as Ancient Greece, where Athens, noted for art and scholarship, and Athena, Athens’ patron goddess and the goddess of wisdom, had the owl as a symbol. Marija Gimbutas traces veneration of the owl as a goddess, among other birds, to the culture of Old Europe, long pre-dating Indo-European cultures.

Owls, birds of the order Strigiformes, include about 200 species of mostly solitary and nocturnal birds of prey typified by an upright stance, a large, broad head, binocular vision and binaural hearing, and feathers adapted for silent flight. Exceptions include the diurnal northern hawk-owl and the gregarious burrowing owl. Owls hunt mostly small mammals, insects, and other birds, although a few species specialize in hunting fish. They are found in all regions of the Earth except Antarctica and some remote islands. Owls are divided into two families: the true owls, Strigidae; and the barn-owls, Tytonidae.

Sigeion was a Greek city in the north-west of the Troad region of Anatolia located at the mouth of the Scamander (the modern Karamenderes River). Sigeion commanded a ridge between the Aegean Sea and the Scamander which is now known as Yenişehir and is a part of the Çanakkale district in Çanakkale province, Turkey. The surrounding region was referred to as the Sigean Promonotory, which was frequently used as a point of reference by ancient geographers since it marked the mouth of the Hellespont. The outline of this promontory is no longer visible due to the alluvial activity of the Karamenderes which has filled in the embayment east of Yenişehir. The name ‘Sigeion’ means ‘silent place’ and is derived from Ancient Greek σιγή (sigē), ‘silence’; in Classical Antiquity, the name was assumed to be antiphrastic, i.e. indicating a characteristic of the place contrary to reality, since the seas in this region are known for their fierce storms.

History

Archaic

Sigeion was founded by the Mytilenaeans from nearby Lesbos in the 8th or 7th century BC. Towards the end of the 7th century BC, the Athenians sent the Olympic victor Phrynon to conquer Sigeion. According to tradition, Phrynon and the Mytilenaean aristocrat Pittacus fought a duel in which Pittacus won by outwitting his opponent by using a net. During this war the aristocrat and poet Alcaeus of Mytilene wrote several poems about the conflict in which he related how he had fled from battle, lost his shield, and endured the shame of the Athenians hanging it up as a trophy in their temple to Athena. Most of these poems are lost except for a few lines, and it is thought that they constituted the major source of information about the conflict for writers in Classical Antiquity.

The Athenians appealed to the Corinthian tyrant Periander to arbitrate between the two sides as to who should rightfully control Sigeion. Periander found in favour of Athens, accepting their argument that whereas they had taken part in the Trojan Wars and helped destroy nearby Ilion, the Mytilenaeans were Aeolians and so had only arrived in the region at a later date and therefore did not have the prior claim to the land. Two inscriptions written in Attic Greek, dating to c. 575-550 BC, and attributed to Sigeion indicate that Athenians continued to live at Sigeion for the next half century. Archaeological remains at the Mytilenaean fort of Achilleion 7-8 km south of Sigeion indicate that throughout this period the Mytilenaeans maintained a hostile presence nearby, and in the 540s this resulted in Mytilene’s recapture of Sigeion. The Athenian tyrant Peisistratus responded by recapturing Sigeion and making his illegitimate son Hegesistratus tyrant of the city. Sigeion remained important to the Peisistratids. after Peisistratos’ son, Hippias, was banished from Athens in 510/9 BC, he spent his exile at Sigeion and minted coins which displayed the Athenian symbol of the owl and his own name as the legend.

Classical

Sigeion maintained close relations with Athens throughout the Classical period. The Sigeans were loyal allies whom we find praised by the Athenians in an inscription from either 451/0 and 418/17 BC, and throughout the 5th century Sigeion was a member of the Athenian run Delian League. In the tribute assessments Sigeion belonged to the Hellespontine District, and in the tribute lists which survive Sigeion appears a total of 15 times between 450/49 and 418/17 BC; at the beginning of this period its tribute was a modest 1,000 drachmas, but by the end its tribute assessment had risen to 1 talent. According to the contemporary historian Theopompus of Chios, Sigeion was the favourite residence of the Athenian general Chares, who spent time there in the late 340s and late 330s BC. The 4th century BC coinage of Sigeion may belong to the period of his rule (335-334 BC). Continuing links with Athens, indicated by Chares’ relationship with Sigeion, are also evident from the iconography of this coinage, which displayed a head of Athena on the obverse and an owl on the reverse. At some point in the 4th century BC (Aristotle simply says ἔναγχος, ‘recently’), Sigeion became embroiled in a land dispute with the nearby island of Tenedos to the south, although we know no further details.

Hellenistic and Roman

In 302 BC King Lysimachus took Sigeion by force when it refused to come over willingly from the side of Antigonus I Monophthalmus. In 168 BC Sigeion sheltered the Macedonian fleet of Antigonus’ descendant Perseus of Macedon. At some point after this, Sigeion was abandoned: in the latter part of Augustus’ reign, the geographer Strabo described Sigeion as κατεσπασμένη πόλις, ‘a city which has been torn down’, and in the mid 1st century AD both Pomponius Mela and Pliny the Elder likewise referred to Sigeion as abandoned. However, references in later sources indicate that the promontory continued to be known as ‘Sigeion’ for many centuries to come.