Apollonia Prepares for War

Triton XIV, Lot: 1677. Estimate $3000. Sold for $4250. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

GREEK. Northern Greece. Lot of Ninety-six (96) AR Drachms from Apollonia Pontika. All coins: Mide-late 4th century BC. Facing gorgoneion, spiral ornament below / Upright anchor, A and crayfish flanking; all in circular incuse. Cf. SNG BM Black Sea 161; cf. SNG Copenhagen 457. VF. LOT SOLD AS IS, NO RETURNS. Ninety-six (96) coins in lot.

Around 610 BC, Ionian Greeks from Miletos established an important outpost on the western Black Sea coast. Originally called Antheia, and located on a natural peninsula and three nearby islands, the city quickly became a prosperous trading post by exporting copper, honey, grain, and timber, while importing wine, salt, textiles, and pottery for resale to the inland Thracians. The city’s key trading partners at the time included fellow-commercial centers Miletos, Athens, Lesbos, Chios, and Rhodes.

Prosperity soon enabled Antheia to expand and develop as an important cultural metropolis. A temple to Apollo was constructed within the city in the late 5th century BC. For 500 talents, it commissioned the Greek sculptor Kalamis (of Boeotia) to cast a 13 ton, 10 meter high, bronze statue of Apollo for the new temple (Strabo VII.6.1). So popular was this temple of Apollo, that the city was now renamed Apollonia in its honor. In 72 BC, during his war against the Thracian Bessi, the proconsul of Macedon, Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus (cos. 73 BC), sacked the city and had the statue transported to Rome, where it was displayed on the Capitol (Pliny, NH XXXIV.18; Strabo VII.6.1).

The 5th and 4th century BC coinage of Apollonia Pontika reflects that city’s origins: commercial wealth and maritime power. The gorgon was a popular apotropaic device, seen as warding off evil; thus a number of ancient Greek cities adopted it as a coin design. The anchor and the crayfish attest to the city’s reliance on maritime commerce for its economy, and the anchor depicted on these coins is actually one of the first anchors of modern design rendered in Greek art.

In 342/1 BC, Philip II attacked and conquered Apollonia as well as other towns in Thrace, thereby incorporating these areas into the Macedonian realm. The famous Gorgon/Anchor silver drachms of Apollonia were struck in the period preceding this event, when the city needed to produce coinage to finance its defense against the impending Macedonian invasion. Philip’s conquest brought a close to the city’s autonomous silver coinage, as no issue subsequent to these was ever minted.

By the 4th century AD, the town once again underwent a change of name. Now known as Sozopolis (“The City of Salvation”), reflecting the inhabitants’ early acceptance of Christianity, its proximity to the Byzantine capital at Constantinople secured a long period of peace and prosperity. In 1328, Byzantine emperor John VI Kantakouzenos spoke of Sozopolis as a large and populous town (Historiae 1.326). The city was one of the last in the region to fall to Ottoman domination, submitting in April 1453, just before the fall of Constantinople. Today the city, now known as Sozopol, is a thriving seaside resort in Bulgaria.