Catalog
Æ
| Issuer | Methymna (Lesbos) |
|---|---|
| Year | 200 BC - 1 BC |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Diameter | Log in to see details |
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| Reference(s) | Münzprägung#22 , HGC 6#916 |
| Obverse description | Helmeted head of Athena facing right, rendered in fine Hellenistic style. The goddess wears a crested Attic helmet with a prominent bowl and cheekguards, with loose curling locks of hair visible beneath the helmet and falling along the neck. The portrait is executed in high relief with well-defined facial features, characteristic of the civic bronze coinage of Lesbos. The field is plain and unlettered. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | A kantharos (two-handled wine cup) depicted centrally in the field, with pronounced handles and a stepped foot, rendered in bold relief. Above the kantharos, a grain ear extends to the right, serving as a civic symbol of agricultural prosperity. The ethnic abbreviation ΜΑΥΘ is distributed around the central device in Greek capitals, with letters placed to the left and right of the kantharos. The design is characteristic of the autonomous civic bronze coinage of Methymna on Lesbos. |
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| Additional information |
Methymna was the second city of Lesbos, consistently overshadowed by Mytilene yet fiercely independent in its civic identity — a rivalry that played out in coinage as much as politics. This small bronze belongs to a municipal series issued under the broad autonomy Greek cities retained even as Pergamene and later Roman authority tightened across the Aegean. HGC 6, 916 places it within a well-documented but modestly produced local sequence, which accounts for the relative difficulty of finding undamaged examples of this module.