Thursday, February 7, 2013

Ancient horse from coins

Salve,
today is Tłusty czwartek (Fat Thursday) and our Polish folklore associates this day with eating pączki  and other delicious sweets; so enjoy them wherever you can find a Polish bakery :)

Good traditions aside,  I have been browsing the web looking for the ancient coins and other Hellenic and Roman art images showing Dioskouroi riding horses and holding palm branches, and I cam across some very interesting coins from the ancient Greeks sphere of influence, i..e., Mediterranean Basin. Why are they interesting? Well, because they show different types of horses.

Please note that I do not own any of these images nor have any right to them - they came from this website Ancient Coin search Info
I am showing them to simply share these interesting depictions of horses of the ancient Hellenic world.
Coins from V to III century B.C. - let's the images speak for themselves . Note that Ann Hyland has written on these horses in her book Equus, The Horse in the Roman World.
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 circa 260 from Carthage - a Numidian stallion?

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 Tarentine, Magna Graecia (Italy) - Osprey has a book on the Tarentine horsemen, we need one on the Numidian horsemen

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 Macedon - Thessalian, Thracian, perhaps steppe influenced horses, eg king Philip II, father of Alexander, brought from his wars (340s B.C.) against the Thracians and Scythians thousands of horses as war spoils - so tell us the ancient historians, eg Quintus Curtius Ruffus or Arrian etc.



Paeonia (Greece)

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 Thrace - Thracian horse, note the famous mares of Greek mythology or Rhesus of Thrace horses

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Thessaly - a Thessalian horse


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Caria, Achaemenid satrapy in Asia Minor - Nisean horse

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1 comment:

Mongólia said...

Could You give me information about theMacedon coins? I am very interested in themiddle one.