HISTORICAL GREEK COINS - eBooks4Greeks.gr

HISTORICAL GREEK COINSbears the likeness of a bearded, bald-headed person,1with a laurel crown (Fig. 4).This coin belongsto the first half of the fourth century.Many, it is true, deny that the headis a portrait; but the extraordinarilyrealistic treatment, in no way approach-Em -suter of ^S t'be representation of any daemoniccyzicus.beings in the art of the time, seems topoint to a human subject. J. P. Six proposed toidentify the person as Timotheus, son of Conon. 2Itseems on the whole safer to refrain from identification.The occurrence of a portrait may surprise uswhen we remember that what we areless at Cyzicusaccustomed to speak of as the type of these electrumcoins is really a glorification of a differentia, a mintmark,or moneyer's symbol. The civic typeis thetunny-fish, the reduction of which to a subordinateposition on this series, just as the seal is reducedon the electrum sixths of Phocaea, has given scopefor some of the most beautiful designs in thewhole Greek coinage. Many of these designs areobviously copied from monuments for; instance,the group of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, and thetwo types which between them reproduce theCecrops Gaia and Erichthonius group, known tous from various other works of art. A 8 Cyzicenemagistrate,who for some reason was interested in1 W. Wroth, B. M. C. Mysia, PI. viii. 9 and p. 33, No. 103.2Num. Chr., 1898, p. 197.3These Atticising types may have had a special political significance ;but the evidence hardly seems to me strong enough for Weil's theorythat Athens had a special arrangement with Cyzicus to supply gold coins(Zeit.J. Num., xxv. pp. 52 f.).58