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Greek city of Tabai in Caria
Bronze 17mm (4.14 grams) Struck circa 1st Century B.C.
Reference: cf. Sear 4946. – VERY RARE
Laureat ehead of Zeus right.
Caps of the DIoscuri (Gemini twins); C-A-N across fields; TABHNΩN below.
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 In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the “Father of Gods and men” 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.
As 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.
 Gemini is one of the constellations of the zodiac. It was one of the 48 constellations described by the 2nd century AD astronomer Ptolemy and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations today. Its name is Latin for “twins,” and it is associated with the twins Castor and Pollux in Greek mythology. Its symbol is  (Unicode ♊).
In Greek and Roman mythology, Castor and Pollux or Polydeuces were twin brothers, together known as the Dioskouri. Their mother was Leda, but Castor was the mortal son of Tyndareus, the king of Sparta, and Pollux the divine son of Zeus, who seduced Leda in the guise of a swan. Though accounts of their birth are varied, they are sometimes said to have been born from an egg, along with their twin sisters Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra.
In Latin the twins are also known as the Gemini or Castores. When Castor was killed, Pollux asked Zeus to let him share his own immortality with his twin to keep them together, and they were transformed into the constellation Gemini. The pair were regarded as the patrons of sailors, to whom they appeared as St. Elmo’s fire, and were also associated with horsemanship.
They are sometimes called the Tyndaridae or Tyndarids, later seen as a reference to their father and stepfather Tyndareus.
Tabae was a city in Caria, although, according to Strabo it was located in a plain in Phrygia on the boundaries of Caria. The place is now Tavas, near Kale, Denizli in Turkey; some inscriptions and numerous ancient remains have been found.
Stephanus Byzantius mentions two cities of this name, one in Lydia, the other in Caria. Livy[2] says that it was on the frontier of Pisidia towards the coast of the Gulf of Pamphylia. The town in question, however, some coins of which are extant, was one which claimed to have been founded by one Tabus. Others derive its name from tabi, which in Semitic languages means “good”, and others from a native word taba, meaning “rock”, which seems a probable derivation. History
In 189 BC, the consul Gnaeus Manlius Vulso, having defeated the inhabitants who blocked his passage, exacted from Tabae a fine of 25 talents and 10,000 medimni of wheat.
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