View reverse
of coin
Tetradrachm. Obverse: Dionysus
148 B.C.
Thasos, Thrace
Silver
Diameter - 30 mm; weight - 16.82 g
It is impossible to imagine the lives of the ancient Greeks
without either the sea that gave them food and wealth or the wine that
was their chief drink and deliverance from everyday routine. It is understandable,
then, why Dionysus - the god of wine and wine-making - was so tremendously
popular in Greece.
There is, however, one important factor that shaped the
features of his cult: Dionysus was an alien, a newcomer, a deity of
Thracian and Lydian origin. The cult of this outsider to the Olympian
gods had a very hard time spreading in Greece and it established itself
only by the 8th or 7th century B.C. By the time coins began to be minted,
Dionysus had become an "insider", but the old conceptions
of him sometimes manifest themselves in the depictions of him on coinage.
On this coin from the island of Thasos (or Thassos) he
is presented to us like one of the Olympians. We see a young god with
long hair crowned with an ivy wreath. This wreath appeared in connection
with the tragic fate of Semele, one of Zeus's mortal lovers, who gave
birth to Dionysus. When the jealous Hera learnt that Semele was pregnant,
she talked her into asking Zeus to show himself to her in all his divine
splendour, although no mortal could bear the sight. Zeus tried to talk
Semele out of her request, but she insisted and, since he had at one
time rashly promised to fulfil her every wish, he was forced to concede.
When Zeus showed himself to Semele in his Olympian shape,
surrounded by flame, the immoderately curious woman was consumed by
fire. Zeus, however, saved their unborn son, commanding ivy to grow
up around him and protect the child from fire. It was from that moment
that ivy became the plant associated with Dionysus.
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