THESSALONICA in MACEDONIA Autonomous 50BC Authentic Ancient Greek Coin i31780

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Item: i31780 Authentic Ancient Coin of: Greek city of Thessalonica in MacedoniaBronze 19mm (6.20 grams) Struck circa 50 B.C. - 50 A.D. Reference: Moushmov 6616; SNG Ans. 816-7 ΘЄССΑΛΟΝΙΚΗ, Woman’s veiled head with turreted crown, right. ΘЄС-СΑΛΟ-ΝΙΚE- ΩN in four lines within laurel wreath. You are bidding on the exact item pictured, provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of Authenticity. The city Thessalonica in Macedonia was founded around 315 BC by the King Cassander of Macedon , on or near the site of the ancient town of Therma and twenty-six other local villages. He named it after his wife Thessalonike , a half-sister of Alexander the Great . She gained her name ("victory of Thessalians": Gk nikē "victory") from her father, Philip II , to commemorate her birth on the day of his gaining a victory over the Phocians , who were defeated with the help of Thessalian horsemen, the best in Greece at that time. Thessaloniki developed rapidly and as early as the 2nd century BC the first walls were built, forming a large square. It was an autonomous part of the Kingdom of Macedon , with its own parliament where the King was represented and could interfere in the city's domestic affairs. Roman era After the fall of the kingdom of Macedon in 168 BC , Thessalonica became a city of the Roman Republic . It grew to be an important trade-hub located on the Via Egnatia , the Roman road connecting Byzantium (later Constantinople ), with Dyrrhachium (now Durrës in Albania ), and facilitating trade between Europe and Asia. The city became the capital of one of the four Roman districts of Macedonia; it kept its privileges but was ruled by a praetor and had a Roman garrison, while for a short time in the 1st century BC , all the Greek provinces came under Thessalonica (the Latin form of the name). Due to the city's key commercial importance, a spacious harbour was built by the Romans, the famous Burrowed Harbour (Σκαπτός Λιμήν) that accommodated the town's trade up to the eighteenth century; later, with the help of silt deposits from the river Axios , it was reclaimed as land and the port built beyond it. Remnants of the old harbour's docks can be found in the present day under Odos Frangon Street, near the Catholic Church.Thessaloniki's acropolis , located in the northern hills, was built in 55 BC after Thracian raids in the city's outskirts, for security reasons.The city had a Jewish colony, established during the first century , and was to be an early centre of Christianity . On his second missionary journey, Paul of Tarsus , born a Hellenized Israelite, preached in the city's synagogue, the chief synagogue of the Jews in that part of Thessaloniki, and laid the foundations of a church. Other Jews opposed to Paul drove him from the city, and he fled to Veroia . Paul wrote two of his epistles to the Christian community at Thessalonica, the First Epistle to the Thessalonians and the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians .Thessaloníki acquired a patron saint, St. Demetrius , in 306. He is credited with a number of miracles that saved the city, and was the Roman Proconsul of Greece under the anti-Christian emperor Maximian , later martyred at a Roman prison where today lies the Church of St. Demetrius , first built by the Roman sub-prefect of Illyricum Leontios in 463. Other important remains from this period include the Arch and Tomb of Galerius , located near the centre of the modern city.A sacrificial tripod was a type of altar used by the ancient Greeks. The most famous was the Delphic tripod , on which the Pythian priestess took her seat to deliver the oracles of the deity. The seat was formed by a circular slab on the top of the tripod, on which a branch of laurel was deposited when it was unoccupied by the priestess. In this sense, by Classical times the tripod was sacred to Apollo . The mytheme of Heracles contesting with Apollo for the tripod appears in vase-paintings older than the oldest written literature. The oracle orig... read more

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