Amyntas III Grandfather of Alexander the Great Ancient Greek Coin EAGLE i51196

  

Item: i51196 Authentic Ancient Coin of. Amyntas III - Grandfather of Alexander III the Great Macedonian King: 389-383 and 381-369 B. Bronze 16mm (3.28 grams) Struck circa 389-369 B. 17-22 Head of young Hercules right, wearing lion's skin.

AMYNTA above eagle standing right, wings closed, devouring serpent held in talons. Martin Price, in'Coins of the Macedonians' p. 21, makes the interesting suggestion that this type belongs to the reign of the infant Amyntas IV 359-357 B. , for whom Philip II was regent.

This can scarcely be considered proven, however, and the style of the coins seems to be more akin to the issues of the early part of the 4th Cent. A great-grandson of Alexander I, Amyntas dethroned the usurper Pausanias in 389 B. Serpents and snakes play a role in many of the world's myths and legends. Sometimes these mythic beasts appear as ordinary snakes. At other times, they take on magical or monstrous forms. Serpents and snakes have long been associated with good as well as with evil, representing both life and death, creation and destruction. Serpents and Snakes as Symbols. In religion, mythology, and literature, serpents and snakes often stand for fertility or a creative life force-partly because the creatures can be seen as symbols of the male sex organ.

They have also been associated with water and earth because many kinds of snakes live in the water or in holes in the ground. The ancient Chinese connected serpents with life-giving rain. Traditional beliefs in Australia, India, North America, and Africa have linked snakes with rainbows, which in turn are often related to rain and fertility. As snakes grow, many of them shed their skin at various times, revealing a shiny new skin underneath. For this reason snakes have become symbols of rebirth, transformation, immortality, and healing.

The ancient Greeks considered snakes sacred to Asclepius, the god of medicine. He carried a caduceus, a staff with one or two serpents wrapped around it, which has become the symbol of modern physicians. For both the Greeks and the Egyptians, the snake represented eternity. Ouroboros, the Greek symbol of eternity, consisted of a snake curled into a circle or hoop, biting its own tail. The Ouroboros grew out of the belief that serpents eat themselves and are reborn from themselves in an endless cycle of destruction and creation. Serpents figured prominently in archaic Greek myths. According to some sources, Ophion "serpent", a. Ophioneus, ruled the world with Eurynome before the two of them were cast down by Cronus and Rhea. The oracles of the Ancient Greeks were said to have been the continuation of the tradition begun with the worship of the Egyptian cobra goddess, Wadjet. The Minoan Snake Goddess brandished a serpent in either hand, perhaps evoking her role as source of wisdom, rather than her role as Mistress of the Animals (Potnia theron), with a leopard under each arm. She is a Minoan version of the Canaanite fertility goddess Asherah. It is not by accident that later the infant Heracles, a liminal hero on the threshold between the old ways and the new Olympian world, also brandished the two serpents that "threatened" him in his cradle. Classical Greeks did not perceive that the threat was merely the threat of wisdom. But the gesture is the same as that of the Cretan goddess. Typhon the enemy of the Olympian gods is described as a vast grisly monster with a hundred heads and a hundred serpents issuing from his thighs, who was conquered and cast into Tartarus by Zeus, or confined beneath volcanic regions, where he is the cause of eruptions. Typhon is thus the chthonic figuration of volcanic forces. Amongst his children by Echidna are Cerberus (a monstrous three-headed dog with a snake for a tail and a serpentine mane), the serpent tailed Chimaera , the serpent-like chthonic water beast Lernaean Hydra and the hundred-headed serpentine dragon Ladon. Both the Lernaean Hydra and Ladon were slain by Heracles. Python was the earth-dragon of Delphi, she always was represented in the vase-paintings and by sculptors as a serpent.

Pytho was the chthonic enemy of Apollo , who slew her and remade her former home his own oracle, the most famous in Classical Greece. Amphisbaena a Greek word, from amphis, meaning "both ways", and bainein, meaning "to go", also called the "Mother of Ants", is a mythological, ant-eating serpent with a head at each end.

According to Greek mythology, the mythological amphisbaena was spawned from the blood that dripped from Medusa the Gorgon's head as Perseus flew over the Libyan Desert with her head in his hand. Medusa and the other Gorgons were vicious female monsters with sharp fangs and hair of living, venomous snakes whose origins predate the written myths of Greece and who were the protectors of the most ancient ritual secrets. The Gorgons wore a belt of two intertwined serpents in the same configuration of the caduceus.

The Gorgon was placed at the highest point and central of the relief on the Parthenon. Asclepius, the son of Apollo and Koronis, learned the secrets of keeping death at bay after observing one serpent bringing another (which Asclepius himself had fatally wounded) healing herbs.

To prevent the entire human race from becoming immortal under Asclepius's care, Zeus killed him with a bolt of lightning. Asclepius' death at the hands of Zeus illustrates man's inability to challenge the natural order that separates mortal men from the gods. In honor of Asclepius, snakes were often used in healing rituals. Non-poisonous snakes were left to crawl on the floor in dormitories where the sick and injured slept.

In The Library , Apollodorus claimed that Athena gave Asclepius a vial of blood from the Gorgons. Gorgon blood had magical properties: if taken from the left side of the Gorgon, it was a fatal poison; from the right side, the blood was capable of bringing the dead back to life. However Euripides wrote in his tragedy Ion that the Athenian queen Creusa had inherited this vial from her ancestor Erichthonios, who was a snake himself and receiving the vial from Athena.

In this version the blood of Medusa had the healing power while the lethal poison originated from Medusa's serpents. Laocoön was allegedly a priest of Poseidon (or of Apollo, by some accounts) at Troy ; he was famous for warning the Trojans in vain against accepting the Trojan Horse from the Greeks, and for his subsequent divine execution. Poseidon (some say Athena), who was supporting the Greeks, subsequently sent sea-serpents to strangle Laocoön and his two sons, Antiphantes and Thymbraeus. Another tradition states that Apollo sent the serpents for an unrelated offense, and only unlucky timing caused the Trojans to misinterpret them as punishment for striking the Horse. Olympias, the mother of Alexander the Great and a princess of the primitive land of Epirus , had the reputation of a snake-handler, and it was in serpent form that Zeus was said to have fathered Alexander upon her; tame snakes were still to be found at Macedonian Pella in the 2nd century AD (Lucian, Alexander the false prophet) and at Ostia a bas-relief shows paired coiled serpents flanking a dressed altar, symbols or embodiments of the Lares of the household, worthy of veneration (Veyne 1987 illus p 211). Aeetes , the king of Colchis and father of the sorceress Medea , possessed the Golden Fleece. He guarded it with a massive serpent that never slept. Medea, who had fallen in love with Jason of the Argonauts, enchanted it to sleep so Jason could seize the Fleece. Amyntas III (died 370 BC), son of Arrhidaeus and father of Philip II , was king of Macedon in 393 BC, and again from 392 to 370 BC. He was also a paternal grandfather of Alexander the Great. He came to the throne after the ten years of confusion which followed the death of Archelaus I. But he had many enemies at home; in 393 he was driven out by the Illyrians , but in the following year, with the aid of the Thessalians , he recovered his kingdom. Medius, head of the house of the Aleuadae of Larissa , is believed to have provided aid to Amyntas in recovering his throne. The mutual relationship between the Argeadae and the Aleuadae dates to the time of Archelaus. To shore up his country against the threat of the Illyrians, Amyntas established an alliance with the Chalkidian League led by Olynthus.

In response, Amyntas sought additional allies. He established connections with Kotys , chief of the Odrysians.

Kotys had already married his daughter to the Athenian general Iphicrates. Prevented from marrying into Kotys' family, Amyntas soon adopted Iphicrates as his son.

After the King's Peace 387 BC, Sparta was anxious to re-establish its presence in the north of Greece. In 385 BC, Bardylis and his Illyrians attacked Epirus instigated and aided by Dionysius of Syracuse. In an attempt to restore the Molossian king Alcetas I of Epirus to the throne. When Amyntas sought Spartan aid against the growing threat of Olynthus, the Spartans eagerly responded. That Olynthus was backed by Athens and Thebes, rivals to Sparta for the control of Greece, provided them with an additional incentive to break up this growing power in the north.

Amyntas thus concluded a treaty with the Spartans, who assisted him to reduce Olynthus (379). He also entered into a league with Jason of Pherae , and assiduously cultivated the friendship of Athens. In 371 BC at a Panhellenic congress of the Lacedaemonian allies, he voted in support of the Athenians' claim and joined other Greeks in voting to help Athens to recover possession of Amphipolis. With Olynthus defeated, Amyntas was now able to conclude a treaty with Athens and keep the timber revenues for himself. By his wife Eurydice , Amyntas had three sons, Alexander II , Perdiccas III and the youngest of whom was the famous Philip II of Macedon.

Amyntas died at an advanced age, leaving his throne to his eldest son. Popularly known to history as Alexander the Great, (" Mégas Aléxandros ") was an Ancient Greek king (basileus) of Macedon. Born in 356 BC, Alexander succeeded his father Philip II of Macedon to the throne in 336 BC, and died in Bablyon in 323 BC at the age of 32.

Alexander was one of the most successful military commanders of all time and it is presumed that he was undefeated in battle. By the time of his death, he had conquered the Achaemenid Persian Empire , adding it to Macedon's European territories; according to some modern writers, this was much of the world then known to the ancient Greeks (the' Ecumene'). His father, Philip, had unified most of the city-states of mainland Greece under Macedonian hegemony in the League of Corinth.

As well as inheriting hegemony over the Greeks, Alexander also inherited the Greeks' long-running feud with the Achaemenid Empire of Persia. After reconfirming Macedonian rule by quashing a rebellion of southern Greek city-states, Alexander launched a short but successful campaign against Macedon's northern neighbours. He was then able to turn his attention towards the east and the Persians. In a series of campaigns lasting 10 years, Alexander's armies repeatedly defeated the Persians in battle, in the process conquering the entirety of the Empire.

He then, following his desire to reach the'ends of the world and the Great Outer Sea', invaded India, but was eventually forced to turn back by the near-mutiny of his troops. Alexander died after twelve years of constant military campaigning, possibly a result of malaria , poisoning , typhoid fever , viral encephalitis or the consequences of alcoholism. His legacy and conquests lived on long after him and ushered in centuries of Greek settlement and cultural influence over distant areas.

This period is known as the Hellenistic period , which featured a combination of Greek , Middle Eastern and Indian culture. Alexander himself featured prominently in the history and myth of both Greek and non-Greek cultures. His exploits inspired a literary tradition in which he appeared as a legendary hero in the tradition of Achilles.

Alexander fighting Persian king Darius III. From Alexander Mosaic, from Pompeii, Naples, Naples National. What is a certificate of authenticity and what guarantees do you give that the item is authentic? You will be quite happy with what you get with the COA; a professional presentation of the coin, with all of the relevant information and a picture of the coin you saw in the listing. Is there a number I can call you with questions about my order?

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