- Katılım
- 4 Şub 2022
- Mesajlar
- 11,711
- Beğeni
- 12,618
Settled by colonists from Phlios and Kleonai, Klazomenai was a member of the Ionian League, and originally stood on the isthmus connecting the mainland with the peninsula on which Erythrai stood; but the inhabitants, alarmed by the encroachments of the Persians, removed themselves to one of the small islands of the bay, and there established their city.
In the King’s Peace of 386 Klazomenai is explicitly mentioned as belonging to Persia, though the city continued to mint coinage in its own name. There was a Klazomenian treasury at Delphi, and Klazomenai consulted the oracle there in 383 about their dispute with Kyme over the city of Leukai. Both cities wished to gain control of Leukai and its cult centre of Apollo, and thus the oracle responded that the city that first managed to make a sacrifice at Leukai on a specified date should be the winner of the dispute. Since it was stipulated that representatives from the two cities should depart from their territory at dawn on the day specified for the sacrifice, the Klazomenians founded a colony close to Leukai and thus won the contest.
This event was celebrated by a festival called Prophthaseia, and a beautiful series of coinage, to which this type belongs, was caused to be struck in commemoration of the city’s victory. Apollo is proudly displayed on the obverse, and the reverse bears a majestic image of a swan, a bird sacred to the god. According to myth, swans would draw the chariot in which Apollo every year flew south from his winter home in the land of the Hyperboreans. The reverse is also a punning allusion to the name of the city itself, as Klazomenai was also home to large numbers of swans, and κλaζειν [Klazein] meant ‘to scream’, and was used to describe the call of the swan. Leukai’s striking of similar coinage in this period attests to Klazomenai’s control over that city.
In the King’s Peace of 386 Klazomenai is explicitly mentioned as belonging to Persia, though the city continued to mint coinage in its own name. There was a Klazomenian treasury at Delphi, and Klazomenai consulted the oracle there in 383 about their dispute with Kyme over the city of Leukai. Both cities wished to gain control of Leukai and its cult centre of Apollo, and thus the oracle responded that the city that first managed to make a sacrifice at Leukai on a specified date should be the winner of the dispute. Since it was stipulated that representatives from the two cities should depart from their territory at dawn on the day specified for the sacrifice, the Klazomenians founded a colony close to Leukai and thus won the contest.
This event was celebrated by a festival called Prophthaseia, and a beautiful series of coinage, to which this type belongs, was caused to be struck in commemoration of the city’s victory. Apollo is proudly displayed on the obverse, and the reverse bears a majestic image of a swan, a bird sacred to the god. According to myth, swans would draw the chariot in which Apollo every year flew south from his winter home in the land of the Hyperboreans. The reverse is also a punning allusion to the name of the city itself, as Klazomenai was also home to large numbers of swans, and κλaζειν [Klazein] meant ‘to scream’, and was used to describe the call of the swan. Leukai’s striking of similar coinage in this period attests to Klazomenai’s control over that city.