Dear Friends of ancient Mythology! This small coin had originally caught my attention because of the humpback cattle on the reverse. When I examined the obverse, however, it turned out that there was much more behind this coin. The Coin: Phrygia, Kibyra, pseudo-autonomous, 1st century AD AE 17, 2.4g, 225° struck under archiereus Klaud. Biantos, time of Domitian, 81-96 obv. KIBYPA - TΩN Bust of Ino, draped and veiled, r. rev. EΠI APXI - E KΛAV BI / ANTOC Humbback cattle, butting r. Ref.: BMC 21; Imhoof-Blumer, Kleinasiatische Münzen, 18; Imhoof-Blumer, Griechische Münzen, 657a corr. (wrong obv. legend IAL and wrong interpretation as Dionysos) rare, about VF This coin shows the rare portrait of Ino. We know that it is really Ino because on some coins she is named in the legend. For that look at Ed Snibles wounderful online version of Barclay Head's Historia Numorum. Mythology: This myth is found in several different versions because it was wide spread over Greece and because ancient dramatists have worked on this theme. Ino was the daughter of Kadmos, king of Thebens in Boiotia, and his wife Harmonia, and so a sister of Semele, Agaue and Atonoe, and the second wife of Athamas. To him she bore two sons, Learchos and Melikertes. Because she hated her stepchildren Phrixos and Helle from Nephele, the first wife of her husband, she tried to put them away. She convinced the women of Boiotia to torrefy their seed and caused a great famine thereby. When Athamas sent messengers to the oracle of Delphi to beg for help she corrupted the returning men to say that Phrixos should be sacrificed to end the disaster. But Phrixos and Helle succeeded in escaping by flying on a winged golden ram, which was sent by Zeus, to Kolchis. Here is the beginning of the myth of the Argonauts (Apoll. Bibl. I, 79-81). Because Ino - asked by Zeus - has nursed the little Dionysos, son of her sister Semele, when Hermes brought him after her death to the nymphs of the mountain Nysa, she was hated by Hera. She sent the Erinye Tisiphone who beat them with madness and Athamas shot his son Learchos with an arrow thinkig he was a stag. Seeing this Ino took her other son Melikertes and jumped from a rock into the sea. Both drowned. According to others she has put him in a kettle with boiling water before. But Zeus recalled her kindness against his son Dionysos and didn't want sent them to the Tartaros (Sometimes this is assigned to Poseidon who saved them, asked by Aphrodite, Ovid Met. IV, 416-543). Therefore he made her the see-goddess Leukothea, the 'White Goddess', a protective goddess of the seamen, and Melikertes the god Palaimon. He was sent on the back of a dolphin to the Corinthian Isthmus where Sisyphos, brother of Athamas, founded the famous Isthmian Games to honour Melikertes. This Mosaic from the Villa Romana del Casale on Sicily, c.320 BC, shows Leukothea swimming on the back of the sea-god Triton across the sea. She is accompagnied by her son Palaimon riding on a pair of dolphins. It was Ino-Leukothea who took pity on Odysseus who drifted as castaway on a raft in heavy storm. She gave him her veil and pointed him the way to his rescue. So Odysseus could save his skin by swimming to the far coast (Homer Od. V, 333-364, 353). This painting of Friedrich Preller the Elder (1804-1878) shows the rescue of Odysseus by Leukothea. In front of Odysseus who is clinging to his wreck Leukothea emerges with her saving veil. Euripides, who has written the lost tragedy 'Ino', seems to have transferred the old fairy tale motive of the evil stepmother to Themisto, the third wife of Athamas: Trying to kill Ino's children she killed her own children because Ino has arranged a clothing change underhand. (Hygin. Fabulae 4) The myth of Ino, Athamas and Melikertes is relevant also in the context of two larger themes. Ino had an end just as tragic as her siblings: Semele died while pregnant with Dionysos, Zeus' child, killed by her own pride and lack of trust in her lover; Agae killed her own son, King Pentheus while struck with Dionysian madness, and Aktaion, son of Autonoe, the third sibling, was torn apart by his own hunting dogs. Also, the insanity of Ino and Athamas, who hunted his own son Learchos as a stag and slew him, can be explained as a result of their contact with Dionysos, whose presence can cause insanity. None can escape the powers of Dionysos, the god of wine. Euripides took up the tale in 'The Bacchae', explaining their madness in Dionysiac terms, as having initially resisted belief in the god's divinity. Background: According to Kereny Ino primary was a Dionysian woman, a Mainad. Mainads were known that in their furiousness they never spare even their own children and lacerated them. To these terrible women naturally belongs Medea too, who together with Jason later plays the leading part in the myth of the Argonauts. Leukothea, actually leuko thea, the White Goddess, was a sea goddess of the popular belief, who was equated with Ino, daughter of Kadmos, by Homer (Od. V, 353f.); the context must be seen in a historic dimension. The motive of jumping into the sea recures in close analogy at Britomartis-Diktynna, but Glaukos too, and should show an existentiell transformation. The story of the veil (Homer Od. V, 346ff.) is a known fairy tale motive and matches well the old sailors tale of the homecoming of the castaway. After the identification of Leukothea with Ino the religious content is arranged widely by the features of Ino. Ino had cults in Boiotia, on the Corinthian Isthmos, on Crete and other places. In Boiotia her cult varied noticably between a divine and a heroic cult. Leukothea is attested in other regions too. Comparable to Leukothea in Rome is Mater Matuta, she has had a temple in Rome. Palaimon is called Portumus, the Harbour God. Sources: (1) Homer, Odyssee (2) Hyginus, Fabulae (3) Apollodoros, Bibliotheke (4) Euripides, Bacchae (5) Ovid, Metamorphoses Secondary Literature: (1) Der kleine Pauly (2) Karl Kerenyi, Die Mythologie der Griechen (3) Robert von Ranke-Graves, Griechische Mythologie (4) Gerhard Fink, Who's who in der antiken Mythologie (5) theoi.com Best regards
