The Early Taurokathapsia Series

CNG 90, Lot: 29. Estimate $150. Sold for $320. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

THESSALY, Larissa. Circa 462/1-460 BC. AR Obol (9mm, 0.99 g, 6h). Forepart of bull left, head facing / Head and neck of horse right within incuse square. Liampi, Corpus 8c (V5/R6 – this coin); BCD Thessaly II 353.4 (same dies). Good VF, toned, some roughness.

From the BCD Collection.

The taurokathapsia was a form of bull fighting that was popular at many games in the ancient Greek world, and particularly in Crete and Thessaly. Scenes of this event are depicted on coins from various cities of Thessaly, but it is especially prevalent in the 5th century BC coinage at Larissa, which provides much of the current evidence about the taurokathapsia today. In the Thessalian version of the event, a man on horseback was to chase down and subdue a bull. He first rode alongside the running bull, then grabbed the bull by the horns and jumped from his steed onto the back of the bull. Still holding the horns, the rider then dismounted the bull, and attempted to wrestle it to the ground. A detailed account of this type of taurokathapsia scene is described in Heliodoros, Aeth. 10, 28-30. Interestingly, the early phase of the event is not depicted on the coins at Larissa, but can be seen on rare issues of Atrax (BCD Thessaly II 53), where the rider is pursuing the bull, and the Thessalian League (BCD Thessaly II 897), where the rider is shown moving from his horse to the bull.

The early taurokathapsia series consists of obols and hemiobols with the taurokathapsia scene on the obverse, and the head and neck of a horse on the reverse. The small canvass offered by these fractions relegated the obverse scene to only show the head or forepart of the bull, but some celators were able to include the forepart of the figure of the man wrestling the bull, his arm shown draped over he top of the bull’s neck. This series was struck concurrently at Krannon, Larissa, Pelinna, Perrhaiboi, Pharkadon, Pherai, Skotussa, and Trikka, and is thought to be a coordinated federal coinage struck duirng the Thessalian alliance with Athens in 462/1 BC (see Liampi, Corpus, and J. Kagan, “The so-called Persian weight coins of Larissa” in Obolos 7, p. 84).