THE COIN COLLECTOR - World eBook Library

THE COLLECTOR SERIES
tium is common in silver, and there seem to have been
alliance-coins between Byzantium and Chalcedon in b.c.
270, but we have none of the iron monev mentioned
by Aristophanes. Of the monetary productions of the
Roman epoch, and of the Graeco-Scvthian series, there
are plentiful examples in silver and bronze ; those
belonging to Odessns are of good style and fabric.
Gold was sparingly used, and its survival in a stater
of Panticapamm testifies, perhaps, to the commercial
prosperity of the ancient Kertch in the fourth century
b.c. A common colonial type in the Chersonesos is that
with Silenos carrying a wine-skin over his shoulder.
Thessaly.—This was a country, where Poseidon was
universally revered as the author of the miracle to which
it owed its existence as dry land, and in whose honour
games, or tmtrcia, where the youth displayed their skill
in seizing wild bulls by the horns and bringing them
to earth, were formerly held ; this legend, and the
grazing horse, significant of the rich pastures of the
Thessalian plains, present themselves on the coins, of
which some are of very fine work. Dr. Head classifies
the money under three periods. About b.c. 480-344,
when the Thessalian autonomy ceased for a time, and
the Macedonian currency took its place; b.c. 302-286,
a temporary autonomous coinage of certain cities, after
the visit to Thessaly of Demetrius Poliorcetes ; b.c.
190-146, a federal coinage, which terminated only on
the reduction of Thessaly to a Roman province. The
chief cities were Crannon, Herakleia (where Herakles
was worshipped), Pharsalos, Pherae, and Larissa. The
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