Obverse: Apollo Crowned with a Laurel Wreath
Reverse: A Kithara Surriunded by Legend
"CALKIDEWN", Magistrate's Name Below
Ancient Olynthos was the most important
political center of the three-fingered peninsula
in southern Macedonia that became known as
the Chalkidike. The city occupied two hills: on
the South Hill lied the city founded by the
Bottiaeans in the 7th century B.C., which was
destroyed by the Persians in 479 B.C. and on the
North Hill lied the Classical city, built in the
Hippodameian system, with vertically crossing
wide and narrow streets, forming regular
architectural blocks. In the early years of the
Peloponnesian War, several of the cities in the
Chalkidike formed the Chalikidian League, which
was based in Olynthos and which issued its own
federal coinage, such as this stellar example. The
coinage of the League began c. 432 B.C., but it
was only c. 420 B.C. that its most celebrated
coins, the tetradrachms, appeared. On the
obverse was the patron deity of the League,
Apollo, the major deity of its mother city,
Chalkis, and on the reverse one of his major
attributes, the lyre. These tetradrachms
continued as an important regular series until
the coinage of the League ended with the rise of
Philip II of Macedon, who completely destroyed
Olynthos and dissolved the League in 348 B.C.
Philip, however, acknowledged the importance of
these coins for the area when he adopted the
League's main coin type, the head of Apollo, for
his own gold coins
How many hands have touched a coin in your
pocket or purse? What eras and lands have the
coin traversed on its journey into our
possession? As we reach into our pockets to pull
out some change, we rarely hesitate to think of
who might have touched the coin before us, or
where the coin will venture to after it leaves our
hands. More than money, coins are a symbol of
the state that struck them, of a specific time and
location, whether contemporary currencies or
artifacts of a long forgotten empire. This
magnificent coin is a memorial to the ancient
glories of a forgotten city passed down from the
hands of civilization to civilization, from
generation to generation.
- (C.2075)
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