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Greek city of
Thermai Himeraiai in
Sicily
Bronze 14mm (2.77 grams) Struck 407-340 B.C.
Reference: HGC 2, 1627 (R1); Sear 1111; B.M.C.2.2
Head of Hera right, wearing stephanos ornamented with honeysuckle.
Head of young Hercules right, in lion’s skin.
The refugees from Himera were permitted by the Carthaginians to found a new
settlement at the hot springs not far from the the old city.
You are bidding on the exact item pictured,
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Hera was
the wife and one of three sisters of
Zeus in the
Olympian pantheon
of
Greek mythology
and
religion
. Her chief function was as the goddess
of women and marriage. Her counterpart in the
religion of ancient Rome
was
Juno
. The
cow
and the
peacock
were sacred to her. Hera’s mother was
Rhea
and her father
Cronus
.
Portrayed
as majestic and solemn, often enthroned, and crowned with the
polos
(a high cylindrical crown worn by
several of the Great Goddesses
), Hera may bear a
pomegranate
in her hand, emblem of fertile
blood and death and a substitute for the narcotic capsule of the
opium
poppy. A scholar of Greek mythology
Walter Burkert
writes in Greek Religion,
“Nevertheless, there are memories of an earlier aniconic representation, as a
pillar in Argos and as a plank in Samos.”
Hera was known for her jealous and vengeful nature, most notably against
Zeus’s lovers and offspring, but also against mortals who crossed her, such as
Pelias
.
Paris
offended her by choosing
Aphrodite
as the most beautiful goddess,
earning Hera’s hatred.
HERCULES – This celebrated
of mythological romance was at first called Alcides, but received the name of
Hercules, or Heracles, from the Pythia of Delphos. Feigned by the poets of
antiquity to have been a son of “the Thunderer,” but born of an earthly mother,
he was exposed, through Juno’s implacable hatred to him as the offspring of
Alemena, to a course of perils, which commenced whilst he was yet in his cradle,
and under each of which he seemed to perish, but as constantly proved
victorious.
At
length finishing his allotted career with native valor and generosity, though
too frequently the submissive agent of the meanness and injustice of others, he
perished self-devotedly on the funeral pile, which was lighted on Mount Oeta.
Jupiter raised his heroic progeny to the skies; and Hercules was honored by the
pagan world, as the most illustrious of deified mortals. The extraordinary
enterprises cruelly imposed upon, but gloriously achieved, by this famous
demigod, are to be found depicted, not only on Greek coins, but also on the
Roman series both consular and imperial. The first, and one of the most
dangerous, of undertakings, well-known under the name of the twelve labors of
Hercules, was that of killing the huge lion of Nemea; on which account the
intrepid warrior is represented, clothes in the skin of that forest monarch; he
also bears uniformly a massive club, sometimes without any other arms, but at
others with a bow and quiver of arrows. On a denarius of the Antia gens he is
represented walking with trophy and club.
When his head alone is typified, as in Mucia gens, it is covered with the lion’s
spoils, in which distinctive decoration he was imitated by many princes, and
especially by those who claimed descent from him – as for example, the kings of
Macedonia, and the successors of Alexander the Great. Among the Roman emperors
Trajan is the first whose coins exhibit the figure and attributes of Hercules.
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