Greek city of Aigeai in Cilicia
Bronze 17mm (3.20 grams) Struck 2nd-1st Century B.C.
Reference: Sear 5519 var.
Bare head of bearded Hercules right.
Club and bow in case; AIΓΕAIΩΝ above,
monogram in field to right.
A town of eastern Cilicia, Aigeai
was situated on the the north-western shores of the Gulf of Issos.
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HERCULES - This celebrated
of mythological romance was at first called Alcides, but received the name of
Hercules, or Heracles, from the Pythia of Delphos. Feigned by the poets of
antiquity to have been a son of "the Thunderer," but born of an earthly mother,
he was exposed, through Juno's implacable hatred to him as the offspring of
Alemena, to a course of perils, which commenced whilst he was yet in his cradle,
and under each of which he seemed to perish, but as constantly proved
victorious.
At
length finishing his allotted career with native valor and generosity, though
too frequently the submissive agent of the meanness and injustice of others, he
perished self-devotedly on the funeral pile, which was lighted on Mount Oeta.
Jupiter raised his heroic progeny to the skies; and Hercules was honored by the
pagan world, as the most illustrious of deified mortals. The extraordinary
enterprises cruelly imposed upon, but gloriously achieved, by this famous
demigod, are to be found depicted, not only on Greek coins, but also on the
Roman series both consular and imperial. The first, and one of the most
dangerous, of undertakings, well-known under the name of the twelve labors of
Hercules, was that of killing the huge lion of Nemea; on which account the
intrepid warrior is represented, clothes in the skin of that forest monarch; he
also bears uniformly a massive club, sometimes without any other arms, but at
others with a bow and quiver of arrows. On a denarius of the Antia gens he is
represented walking with trophy and club.
When his head alone is typified, as in Mucia gens, it is covered with the lion's
spoils, in which distinctive decoration he was imitated by many princes, and
especially by those who claimed descent from him - as for example, the kings of
Macedonia, and the successors of Alexander the Great. Among the Roman emperors
Trajan is the first whose coins exhibit the figure and attributes of Hercules.
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