View reverse
of coin
Tetradrachm. Obverse: Hermes
400-350 B.C.
Enos, Thrace
Silver
Diameter - 22 mm; weight - 15.79 g
Hermes was no less weighed down with duties than Apollo
or Aphrodite - both as a donor of riches and as the patron of trade
and merchants. It might seem that the appearance of his image on coins
was inevitable. But things were not so simple. Surprisingly the number
of cities with coins bearing depictions of this god was considerably
smaller than the number minting coins with the image of, say, Apollo.
Evidently not every city was prepared to entrust such an important matter
as the making of coins to the protection of a god with such strong inclinations
to deceit and theft.
Yet many did take the risk and it is quite interesting
to see what Hermes looks like on their coins. The most striking things
about this tetradrachm from the Thracian city of Enos is that the god
is depicted wearing a hat. This is fairly unusual if we bear in mind
that the Greeks did not wear hats in everyday life, apart from merchants
and travellers who spent long periods out in the open exposed to the
sun and rain. Since Hermes was considered the protector of both these
groups, the hat was entirely appropriate for him.
For the most part Hermes wore a hat with a broad brim
of the sort known as petasus. On the Hermitage coin we find the semicircular
hat called a pilus, which in contrast to the petasus could be made of
felt, and was the preferred headwear of Greek craftsmen (apart from
slaves). A hat like this kept their hair tidy and out of the way as
they worked. For Hermes, as the patron of labour of all sorts, such
a hat was very suitable.
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