Ancient Coins: The Stater

Today we're going to the 6th Century BC. Coinage is still in its infancy, and the city of Cyzicus begins putting very creative designs on their coins.

This will become a yearly tradition, with every new year came a new design, and for some 200 years the city generated a massive and very impressive series of coins. Today, we are looking at 4 of such coins, full of mythological imagery on them.

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[benoone]

A splendid production. Love your videos, the photo shooting and calm yet enthusiastic voice.

[tanishjain]

I really find the mythological deities on Kushan coins to be fascinating, mainly because their deity is kinda a result of a mixture of 3 religions (like in the case of bronze coins issued by Kanishka), and it is fascinating to see how these rulers integrated the local customs in their coinage and their day to day life. In fact, I have one of Kanishka II which has the deity Ardochsho

[danagray]

I love getting to see these beautiful, historic treasures and learning about their context!

[isabelcrb]

I love your videos! Really interesting coins!!

[TheHammeredCorner]

Great video mate, lovely to see some beautiful gold staters 😍

[dnkal]

A very interesting Greek coin and very rare is the one of the ancient city of Mytilene circa 454-427 BC which have an optical illusion. and I believe is the only one

[officeguy]

Fantastic coins and another great video. Thank you.

[VintageParagonUk]

I have been enjoying all of your videos over the years and just want to say thank you for making them, they are fantastic and I have learned so much! I do a bit of metal detecting and found a quarter stater last year in the UK but I think I might get back into coin collecting again, your fantastic collection and others has renewed my passion, my favourite is also Roman like yours 😁👍

[TheTigerQuoll]

Some of the most beautiful coins i have seen on this channel.The lion looks like it is bending/breaking a sword to me.

[Numischannel]

Hi Leo! It is supposed that quite early, the types at Cyzicus changed annually, representing the acting/responsible magistrate of each yearly issue, since most ancient Greek magistratures were annual. The one with the lion biting the leg it is the first time I see it.

[MyMy-tvfd]

superb vid, thanks very much for this

[iamtiberius]

I've only had the pleasure of owning 1 electrum stater. A fairly boring example with a hound on the obverse. In reference to the Lion biting in the Fritze 177 example; I'm of the theory that SNG described it as a leg of prey because they only had access to a poor example dozens of years ago. As better examples have manifested, I think it's obviously a sword being bent by the lion. It's definitely in my top 5 to eventually acquire.

[davemarks]

Very interesting video, even though I don't own any staters (and likely never will). Thanks for the vid!

[RinoaL]

6:50 that doesn't look like a leg, it looks like a sword. you can see its hilt.

[binaryplanettectonics]

The last stater described with the lion, prima facie the limb bitten could be seen as a (cast bronze) sword. Could the imagery be that of a lion trying to dislodge a sword impaled through his palette (roof of his mouth)? This design appears to be distinct from a lion type attacking an animal limb within the image of multiple staters also seen in the video.

[samburdge]

love your work....keep upping your wish your expanded your time spent on the regional context, historical context, symbolism, methods of creation et bless

[thatoneguy]

I recently got a roman follis from Cyzicus! ;D

I’ve got a question though, was there a lower denomination of stater for smaller transactions and less wealthy people, or did they still do trade without coinage?

[mattsmocs]

For all its worth. Id be happy just to hold one knowing its age and history, thats on the bucketlist, maybe someday if i knew someone with one and had the level of trust to do so.

[dominicg]

How are you able to present these? Are you a professor at Oxford?

[gspaulsson]

I notice that in the great majority of these coins, the human or animal they depict is facing left. Too small a sample to generalize from, but I wonder if that has some significance?