TERMESSOS MINOR in LYCIA 1CenBC Zeus Scepter Thunderbolt RARE Greek Coin i56074

Item: i56074

Authentic Ancient 

Coin of:

Greek city of Termessos Minor in Lycia
Bronze 20mm (6.26 grams) Struck 1st Century B.C.
Reference: Sear 5358; SNG France 2090; SNG Copenhagen -; SNG von Aulock 4455 
(Lycia)
Laureate head of Zeus right, scepter behind.
Winged thunderbolt; TEP – MHΣ / ΣE – ΩΝ above and 
beneath.

A colony of the Pisidian Termessos; the exact site is 
uncertain, but is probably to be looked for in the vicinity of Oinoanda in 
northern Lycia.

You are bidding on the exact item pictured, 

Authenticity.

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
.

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.

Oenoanda 
or Oinoanda (Greek:
τὰ Οἰνόανδα) was an
ancient Greek
city in
Lycia
, in the upper valley of the
River Xanthus
. It is noted for the 
philosophical inscription by the
Epicurean
,
Diogenes of Oenoanda
. The ruins of the city lie 
west of the modern village
İncealiler
in the
Fethiye
district of
Muğla Province
,
Turkey
, which partly overlies the ancient site.

History

The early history of the settlement is obscure, in spite of an exploratory 
survey carried out, with permission of the Turkish authorities, by the British 
Institute at Ankara (BIAA) in 1974–76. It seems that Oinoanda became a colony of
Termessos
about 200-190 BC and was also called 
Termessos Minor (or Termessos i pros Oinoanda). Oenoanda was the most southerly 
of the Kibyran
Tetrapoleis in the
Hellenistic Period
, which was dissolved by
L. Licinius Murena
in 84 BCE, whereupon 
Oenoanda became part of the
of Lycia
koinon, 
as its inscriptions abundantly demonstrate.

Diogenes carved a summary of the philosophy of
Epicurus
onto a
portico
wall, which originally extended about 
80 meters. The inscription sets out
Epicurus
‘ teachings on
physics
,
epistemology
, and
ethics
. It was originally about 25,000 words 
long and filled 260 square meters of wall space. The inscription has been 
assigned on
epigraphic
grounds to the
Hadrianic
period, 117–138 CE. 
The stoa was dismantled in the second half of the third century CE to make room 
for a defensive wall; previously the site had been undefended.

The site was first noted by Hoskyns and Forbes, in 1841, and published in the
Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, xii (1843). The extensive 
philosophical inscriptions of Diogenes of Oenoanda were identified later from 
scattered fragments, apparently from the

stoa. It cannot be assumed that Diogenes erected himself. Evidence 
for an ancient
Roman

Bridge at Oinoanda
has surfaced in the 1990s. 
By 2012 over 300 fragments of Diogenes’ stoa had been identified, varying in 
size from a few letters to passages of several sentences covering more than one 
block. New archaeological work is being conducted at the site by the
Deutsches Archäologisches Institut
.

Oenoanda is a
titular see
of the
Roman Catholic Church
.

Lycia 
was a geopolitical region in
Anatolia
in what are now the
provinces
of
Antalya
and
Muğla
on the southern
coast
of
Turkey
, and
Burdur
Province inland. Known to history since 
the records of
ancient Egypt
and the
Hittite Empire
in the
Late Bronze Age
, it was populated by speakers 
of the
Luwian language
group. Written records began to 
be inscribed in stone in the
Lycian language
(a later form of Luwian) after 
Lycia’s involuntary incorporation into the
Achaemenid Empire
in the Iron Age. At that time 
(546 BC) the Luwian speakers were decimated, and Lycia received an influx of 
Persian speakers.

Lycia fought for the Persians in the 
Persian Wars
, but on the defeat of the
Achaemenid Empire
by the Greeks, it became 
intermittently a free agent. After a brief membership in the
Athenian Empire
, it seceded and became 
independent (its treaty with Athens had omitted the usual non-secession clause), 
was under the Persians again, revolted again, was conquered by
Mausolus
of
Caria
, returned to the Persians, and went under 
Macedonian hegemony at the defeat of the Persians by
Alexander the Great
. Due to the influx of Greek 
speakers and the sparsity of the remaining Lycian speakers, Lycia was totally 
Hellenized under the Macedonians. The Lycian language disappeared from 
inscriptions and coinage.

On 
defeating
Antiochus III
in 188 BC the Romans gave Lycia 
to Rhodes
for 20 years, taking it back in 168 BC. 
In these latter stages of the
Roman republic

United States Constitution, influencing their 
thoughts.

Despite home rule under republican principles Lycia was not a sovereign state 
and had not been since its defeat by the
Carians
. In 43 AD the Roman emperor 
Claudius
dissolved the league. Lycia was 
incorporated into the
Roman Empire
with a provincial status. It 
became an eparchy
of the Eastern, or
Byzantine Empire
, continuing to speak Greek 
even after being joined by communities of
Turkish language
speakers in the early 2nd 
millennium. After the fall of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century, Lycia 
was under the
Ottoman Empire
, and was inherited by the
Turkish Republic
on the fall of that empire. 
The Greeks were withdrawn when the border between Greece and Turkey was 
negotiated in 1923.