Catalog
Drachm Olympos
| Issuer | Olympos |
|---|---|
| Year | 100 BC - 88 BC |
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| Shape | Round (irregular) |
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| Obverse description | Laureate head of Apollo facing right, rendered in the Hellenistic style with finely engraved wavy hair swept back beneath a laurel wreath, a loose lock falling to the neck. The facial features are modeled in relief with almond-shaped eye and slightly parted lips. The neck is draped, and the portrait occupies the full flan in a compact, vigorous composition typical of late Lycian civic coinage. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | A kithara (lyre) displayed centrally within a deeply struck incuse square, flanked to the left by a palm branch and to the right by a trophy. The ethnic legend ΟΛΥΜΠΗ is inscribed above the kithara, identifying the issuing city of Olympos in Lycia. The composition is characteristic of the autonomous civic silver coinage of Olympos, combining musical and military symbols emblematic of Apollo's patronage. |
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| Additional information |
Olympos was a minor Lycian city whose independent coinage effectively ended with the Roman reorganization of the region following Murena's campaigns and the suppression of piracy networks that had made the Lycian coast their operational base through much of the first century BC. This drachm belongs to the final window of autonomous civic issue before that curtailment — the city's numismatic output is sparse enough that the Boston MFA and ANS holdings represent a meaningful fraction of the documented die corpus.