|
Greek City of Colophon in Ionia
Bronze 10mm (1.0 grams) Struck 350 B.C.
Reference: Sear 4351; B.M.C. 14.38,16
Head of Apollo right wearing tainia.
Lyre; KOΛO - Φ - ΩΝΙΩΝ around, I beneath..
Situated several miles inland, on the river Halesos, Colophon
was an important city and claimed to be the birthplace of Homer. The famous
oracle of Apollo Klarios was within its territory.
You are bidding on the exact item pictured,
provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of
Authenticity.
 Colophon
(Greek
Κολοφών) was a city in the region of
Lydia in
antiquity dating from about the turn of the first millennium-BC. It was likely
one the oldest of the twelve
Ionian League cities, between
Lebedos (120
stadia to the west) and
Ephesus (to
its south) and its ruins are in the eponymously named modern region of
Ionia.
The city's name comes from the word κολοφών, 'summit', which is also the
origin of the bibliographic term 'colophon',
in the metaphorical sense of a 'crowning touch', as it was sited along a
ridgeline. The term "colophony"
for rosin comes
from the term colophonia resina, that is, resin from the pine trees of
Colophon, which was highly valued for the strings of musical instruments.
The ruins of the city are at the
Castro of Ghiaour-Keui, a minor village in
İzmir,
Menderes.
Antiquity
In Greek antiquity two sons of
Codrus,
King of Athens, established a colony there. It was the birthplace of the
philosopher
Xenophanes and the poet
Mimnermus.
After the death of Alexander the Great,
Perdiccas
expelled the Athenian settlers on
Samos to Colophon, including the family of
Epicurus,
who joined them there after completing his military service.
The cavalry of Colophon was renowned. In the third century BC, it was
destroyed by
Lysimachus—a
Macedonian officer, one of the successors (Diadochi)
of
Alexander the Great, later a king (306 BCE) in
Thrace and
Asia Minor, during the same era when he nearly destroyed (and did depopulate
by forced expulsion) the neighboring Ionian League city of
Lebedos.
Notium served as the port, and in the neighbourhood was the village of
Clarus, with
its famous temple and oracle of
Apollo Clarius, where
Calchas vied
with Mopsus in
divinatory science.
In
Roman times, after
Lysimachus'
conquest, Colophon failed to recover (unlike
Lebedos) and lost its importance; actually, the name was transferred to the
site of the port village of
Notium, and the latter name disappeared between the
Peloponnesian War and the time of
Cicero (late
400s BC to
1st
century BC).
Additionally, the city, as a major location on the Ionic mainland, was cited
as a possible home or birthplace for
Homer. In his
True History,
Lucian lists it as a possible birthplace along with the island of
Khios and the city of Smyrna, though Lucian's Homer claims to be from
Babylon.
|
