The State Hermitage Museum: Exhibitions

View reverse of coin

Coin of indeterminate value. Obverse: Ares

282-203 B.C.

Bruttia, Lucania

Copper

Diameter - 26 mm; weight - 17.27 g

Ares, the god of war, was of Thracian origin. The Greeks, such as the Athenians, despised the Thracians as barbarians for whom war was an everyday activity.

More than anything Ares loved bloody battles. In combat he was furious and uncontrollable. The Olympians, from Zeus and Hera down, did not like him (apart, admittedly, for Aphrodite, who was passionately in love with him, and Hades, who with the aid of Ares increased the number of his subjects in the kingdom of the dead). Ares was not always victorious, however. He was twice defeated by Athena, for example, while the giants Aloadae, sons of Aloeus, even took him prisoner and held him in a bronze vessel for thirteen months before he was liberated half-dead by Hermes.

Ares was considered the son of Zeus and Hera, but there was another version that claimed he was born fatherless by an infuriated Hera when she touched a magic flower.

On the coin featured here, Ares is depicted in the guise of a mature man with a thick beard, wearing a Corinthian helmet decorated with a griffon. Helmets like this were extremely popular with Greek warriors. Fairly simple in construction, it could be pulled down over the face to protect it from blows. It did have the disadvantage, though, that the narrow eye-slits considerably restricted the wearer's field of vision.

View obverse of coin

Coin of indeterminate value. Reverse: Bellona, the goddess of war, with a spear and shield

282-203 B.C.

Bruttia, Lucania

Copper

Diameter - 26 mm; weight - 17.27 g