Item: i62035

Authentic Ancient Greek Coin of:

Kingdom of Macedonia
Philip II - King: 359-336 B.C. - (Father of Alexander III the Great)
Commemorating his Olympic Games Victory
Bronze 16mm (6.26 grams) Struck circa 356-294 B.C.
Reference: Sear 6696-6699 var.; HGC 3, 881-885
Head of Apollo right, hair bound with tainia.
Youth on horse prancing right, ΦIΛIΠΠΟΥ above.

This coin refers to the great victories of in the horse racing event of the ancient Olympics his kingdom had the great honor of participating in, alluded to by the youth on the horse.

Philip II, born B.C. 382 in Pella, came to power as king of Macedonia in 359 B.C. Through a policy of expansion, he annexed many territories to his kingdom. He had many wives and most importantly had a child by his wife Olympias whom succeeded him later as king and was known as Alexander III the Great. He had Alexander educated by Aristotle, as Philip was a lover of great minds. Alexander fought with him side-by-side in several key battles of his campaigns. It was this military training, and the army Philip left him, that allowed Alexander to go to being "the Great", and overshadow his father, thus spreading Greek civilization and culture as far as northern India with his undefeated conquests.

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History and Meaning of the Coin

During the times of ancient Greeks, horse racing was one of the events various Greek city-states and kingdoms would have intense competition with each other, as it was of great prestige to participate. Before the time of Philip II, the kingdom of Macedonia was considered barbarian and not Greek. Philip II was the first king of Macedon that was accepted for participation in the event, which was a great honor all in itself. It was an even greater honor that Philip's horses would go on to win two horse-racing events. In 356 B.C., he won the single horse event and then in 348 B.C. chariot pulled by two horses event. As a way to proudly announce, or what some would say propagandize these honors, Philip II placed a reference to these great victories on his coins struck in all three metals of bronze, silver and gold. The ancient historian, Plutarch, wrote "[Philip of Macedon] ... had victories of his chariots at Olympia stamped on his coins."
 

In Greek and Roman mythology, Apollo, is one of the most important and diverse of the Olympian deities. The ideal of the kouros (a beardless youth), Apollo has been variously recognized as a god of light and the sun; truth and prophecy; archery; medicine and healing; music, poetry, and the arts; and more. Apollo is the son of Zeus and Leto, and has a twin sister, the chaste huntress Artemis. Apollo is known in Greek-influenced Etruscan mythology as Apulu. Apollo was worshiped in both ancient Greek and Roman religion, as well as in the modern Greco-Roman Neopaganism.

As the patron of Delphi (Pythian Apollo), Apollo was an oracular god - the prophetic deity of the Delphic Oracle. Medicine and healing were associated with Apollo, whether through the god himself or mediated through his son Asclepius, yet Apollo was also seen as a god who could bring ill-health and deadly plague as well as one who had the ability to cure. Amongst the god's custodial charges, Apollo became associated with dominion over colonists, and as the patron defender of herds and flocks. As the leader of the Muses (Apollon Musagetes) and director of their choir, Apollo functioned as the patron god of music and poetry. Hermes created the lyre for him, and the instrument became a common attribute of Apollo. Hymns sung to Apollo were called paeans.

In Hellenistic times, especially during the third century BCE, as Apollo Helios he became identified among Greeks with Helios, god of the sun, and his sister Artemis similarly equated with Selene, goddess of the moon. In Latin texts, on the other hand, Joseph Fontenrose declared himself unable to find any conflation of Apollo with Sol among the Augustan poets of the first century, not even in the conjurations of Aeneas and Latinus in Aeneid XII (161-215). Apollo and Helios/Sol remained separate beings in literary and mythological texts until the third century CE.

Youngest son of Amyntas III and Eurydice I, reigned B.C. 359-336. He was born in 382, and was brought up at Thebes, whither he had been carried as a hostage by Pelopidas, and where he received a most careful education. Upon the death of his brother Perdiccas III, who was slain in battle against the Illyrians, Philip obtained the government of Macedonia, at first merely as regent and guardian to his infant nephew Amyntas IV ; but at the end of a few months he was enabled to set aside the claims of the young prince, and to assume for himself the title of king.

Macedonia was beset by dangers on every side. Its territory was ravaged by the Illyrians on the W., and the Paeonians on the N., while Pausanias and Argaeus took advantage of the crisis to put forward their pretensions to the throne. Philip was fully equal to the emergency. By his tact and eloquence he sustained the failing spirits of the Macedonians, while at the same time he introduced among them a stricter military discipline, and organized their army on the plan of the phalanx, armed with the sarissa, an exceedingly long spear.

He first turned his arms against Argaeus, the most formidable of the pretenders, since he was supported by the Athenians. He defeated Argaeus in battle, and then concluded a peace with the Athenians. He next attacked the Paeonians, whom he reduced to subjection, and immediately afterwards defeated the Illyrians in a decisive battle, and compelled them to accept a peace, by which they lost a portion of their territory.

Thus in the short period of one year, and at the age of 24, had Philip delivered himself from his dangerous position, and provided for the security of his kingdom. But energy and talents such as his were not satisfied with mere security, and henceforth his views were directed, not to defense, but to aggrandizement. His first efforts were directed to obtain possession of the various Greek cities upon the Macedonian coast.

Soon after his accession he had withdrawn his garrison from Amphipolis, and had declared it a free city, because the Athenians had supported Argaeus with the hope of recovering Amphipolis, and his continuing to hold the place would have interposed difficulties in the way of a peace with Athens, which was at that time an object of great importance to him. But he had never meant se­riously to abandon this important town ; and ac­cordingly having obtained pretexts for war with the Amphipolitans, he laid siege to the town and gained possession of it in 358. The Athenians had sent no assistance to Amphipolis, because Philip in a secret negotiation with the Athenians, led them to believe that he was willing to restore the city to them when he had taken it, and would do so on condition of their making him master of Pydna.

After the capture of Amphipolis, he proceeded at once to Pydna, which seems to have yielded to him without a struggle, and the acquisition of which, by his own arms, and not through the Athenians, gave him a pretext for declining to stand by his secret engagement with them. The hostile feeling which such conduct necessarily excited against him at Athens, made it most im­portant for him to secure the good will of the powerful town of Olynthus, and to detach the Olynthians from the Athenians. Accordingly he gave to the Olynthians the town of Potidaea, which he took from the Athenians in 356.

Soon after this, he attacked and took a settlement of the Thasians, called Crenides, and, having intro­duced into the place a number of new colonists, he named it Philippi after himself. One great ad­vantage of this acquisition was, that it put him in possession of the gold mines of the district. From this point there is for some time a pause in the active operations of Philip. In 352 he took Methone after a lengthened siege, in the course of which he himself lost an eye. The capture of this place was a necessary preliminary in any movement towards the S., lying as it did between him and the Thessalian border.

He now marched into Thessaly to aid the Aleuadae against Lycophron, the tyrant of Pherae. The Phocians sent a force to support Lycophron, but they were defeated by Philip, and their general Onomarchus slain. This victory gave Philip the ascendancy in Thessaly. He established at Pherae what he wished the Greeks to consider a free government, and then advanced S.-ward to Thermopylae. The pass, however, he found guarded by a strong Athenian force, and he was compelled, or at least thought it expedient to retire.

He now turned his arms against Thrace, and succeeded in establishing his ascendancy in that country also. Meanwhile Philip's movements in Thessaly had opened the eyes of Demosthenes to the real danger of Athens and Greece, and his first Philippic (delivered in 352) was his earliest attempt to rouse his countrymen to energetic efforts against their enemy; but he did not produce much effect upon the Athenians.

In 349 Philip commenced his attacks on the Chalcidian cities. Olynthus, in alarm, applied to Athens for aid, and Demosthenes, in his 3 Olynthiac orations, roused the people to efforts against the common enemy, not very vigorous at first and fruitless in the end. In the course of 3 years Philip gained possession of all the Chalcidian cities, and the war was brought to a conclusion by the capture of Olynthus itself in 347.

In the following year (346) he concluded peace with the Athenians, and straightway marched into Phocis, and brought the Phocian war to an end. The Phocian cities were destroyed, and their place in the Amphictyonic council was made over to the king of Macedonia, who was appointed also, jointly with the Thebans and Thessalians, to the presidency of the Pythian games. Ruling as he did over a barbaric nation, such a recognition of his Hellenic character was of the greatest value to him, especially as he looked forward to an invasion of the Persian empire in the name of Greece, united under him in a great national confederacy.

During the next few years Philip steadily pursued his ambitious projects. From 342 to 340 he was engaged in an expedition in Thrace, and attempted to bring under his power all the Greek cities in that country. In the last of these years he laid siege to Perinthus and Byzantium; but the Athenians, who had long viewed Philip's aggrandizement with fear and alarm, now resolved to send assistance to these cities. Phocion was appointed to the command of the armament destined for this service, and succeeded in com­pelling Philip to raise the siege of both the cities (339).

Philip now proceeded to carry on war against his northern neighbors, and seemed to give himself no further concern about the affairs of Greece. But meanwhile his hirelings were treache­rously promoting his designs against the liberties of Greece. In 339 the Amphictyons declared war against the Locrians of Amphissa for having taken possession of a district of the sacred land ; but as the general they had appointed to the command of the Amphictyonic army was unable to effect any thing against the enemy, the Amphictyons at their next meeting in 338 conferred upon Philip the command of their army. Philip straight­way marched through Thermopylae and seized Elatea. The Athenians heard of his approach with alarm; they succeeded, mainly through the influence of Demosthenes in forming an alliance with the Thebans; but their united army was defeated by Philip in the month of August, 338, in the decisive battle of Chaeronea, which put an end to the independence of Greece.

Thebes paid dear for her resistance, but Athens was treated with more favor than she could have expected. Philip now seemed to have within his reach the accomplish­ment of the great object of his ambition, the invasion and conquest of the Persian empire. In a congress held at Corinth, which was attended by deputies from every Grecian state with the exception of Sparta, war with Persia was determined on, and the king of Macedonia was appointed to command the forces of the national confederacy.

In 337 Philip's marriage with Cleopatra, the daughter of Attalus, one of his generals, led to the most serious disturbances in his family. Olympias and Alexander withdrew in great indignation from Macedonia ; and though they returned home soon afterwards, they continued to be on hostile terms with Philip. Meanwhile, his preparations for his Asiatic expedition were not neglected, and early in 336 he sent forces into Asia, under Parmenion, to draw over the Greek cities to his cause. But in the summer of this year he was murdered at a grand festival which he held at Aegae, to solemnize the nuptials of his daughter (by his wife Olympias), named Cleopatra, with Alexander I of Epirus. His murderer was a youth of noble blood, named Pausanias of Orestis, who stabbed him as he was walking in the procession. The assassin was immediately pursued and slain by some of the royal guards. His motive for the deed is stated by Aristotle to have been private resentment against Philip, to whom he had complained in vain of a gross outrage offered to him by Attalus. Olympias and Alexander, however, were suspected of being implicated in the plot.

Philip died in the 47th year of his age and the 24th of his reign, and was succeeded by Alexander the Great. Philip had a great number of wives and concubines. Besides Olympias and Cleopatra, we may mention, 1. his first wife Audata, an Illyrian princess, and the mother of Cynane; 2. Phila, sister of Derdas and Machatas, a princess of Elymiotis; 3. Nicesipolis of Pherae, the mother of Thessalonica; 4. Philinna of Larissa, the mother of Arrhidaeus ; 5. Meda, daughter of Cithelas, king of Thrace ; 6. Arsinoe, the mother of Ptolemy I., king of Egypt, with whom she was pregnant when she married Lagus. To these numerous connections temperament as well as policy seems to have in­clined him.

He was strongly addicted, indeed, to sensual enjoyment of every kind; but his passions, however strong, were always kept in subjection to his interests and ambitious views. He was fond of science and literature, in the patronage of which he appears to have been liberal ; and his appreciation of great minds is shown by his connection with Aristotle. In the pursuit of his political objects he was, as we have seen, unscrupulous, and ever ready to resort to duplicity and corruption; but when we consider his humanity and generous clemency, we may admit that he does not appear to disadvantage, even morally speaking, by the side of his fellow conquerors of mankind.

Macedonia or Macedon was an ancient kingdom on the northern periphery of Classical Greece and later the dominant state of Hellenistic Greece. It was ruled during most of its existence initially by the legendary founding dynasty of the Argeads, the intermittent Antipatrids and finally the Antigonids. Home to the Macedonians, the earliest kingdom was centered on the northeastern part of the Greek peninsula, bordered by Epirus to the west, Paeonia to the north, the region of Thrace to the east and Thessaly to the south.

The rise of Macedon, from a small kingdom at the fringe of typical Greek city states affairs, to one which came to control the fate of the entire Hellenic world, occurred under the reign of Philip II. With the innovative Macedonian army, he defeated the old powers of Athens and Thebes in the decisive Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC and subdued them, while keeping Sparta in check. His son Alexander the Great pursued his father's effort to command the whole of Greece through the federation of Greek states, a feat he finally accomplished after destroying a revolting Thebes. Young Alexander was then ready to lead this force, as he aspired, in a large campaign against the Achaemenid Empire, in retaliation for the invasion of Greece in the 5th century BC.

In the ensuing wars of Alexander the Great, he was ultimately successful in conquering a territory that came to stretch as far as the Indus River. For a brief period his Macedonian Empire was the most powerful in the world, the definitive Hellenistic state, inaugurating the transition to this new period of Ancient Greek civilization. Greek arts and literature flourished in the new conquered lands and advancements in philosophy and science were spread to the ancient world. Of most importance were the contributions of Aristotle, a teacher to Alexander, whose teachings carried on many centuries past his death.

After the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, the following wars of the Diadochi and the partitioning of his short-lived empire, Macedonia proper carried on as a Greek cultural and political center in the Mediterranean region along with Ptolemaic Egypt, the Seleucid Empire, and the Attalid kingdom. Important cities like Pella, Pydna, and Amphipolis were involved in power struggles for control of the territory, and new cities were founded, like Thessalonica by the usurper Cassander, which is now the second largest city of modern day Greece. Macedonia's decline of influence began with the rise of Rome until its ultimate subjection during the second Macedonian Wars.

The Roman province of Macedonia (Latin: Provincia Macedoniae, Greek: Ἐπαρχία Μακεδονίας) was officially established in 146 BC, after the Roman general Quintus Caecilius Metellus defeated Andriscus of Macedon, the last self-styled King of the ancient kingdom of Macedonia in 148 BC, and after the four client republics (the "tetrarchy") established by Rome in the region were dissolved. The province incorporated ancient Macedonia, with the addition of Epirus, Thessaly, and parts of Illyria, Paeonia and Thrace. This created a much larger administrative area, to which the name of 'Macedonia' was still applied. The Dardanians, to the north of the Paeonians, were not included, because they had supported the Romans in their conquest of Macedonia.