Naples: Modern Museum Site of Ancient Treasures !
Neapolis: Ancient Mint Site of First Roman Coin !?!
National Archaeological Museum of Naples. (The building is a converted Spanish cavalry hall, 1514 CE.) A select few of the renowned holdings of this museum follow below.
Left: Aristogeiton and Harmodios, The Tyrant Killers, Athens, 480 BCE, Roman copy, 1st C. CE./ Right: Antinoo and Hadrian, Roman, 2nd C. CE.
Left: Aphrodite of Knidos, Roman copy after Praxiteles, 350 BCE./ Left center: Farnese Hercules, Roman copy, 3rd C. CE., after Glykon of Athens./ Right center: Roman copy of Polykleitos' Doryphoros./ Right: Venus Callipige, Nero era Roman copy of this Hellenistic work.
Faunus of Pompeii in front of the Alexander Mosaic of the Battle of Isse between Alexander and Darius in 333 BCE. Both pieces are from Pompeii's House of the Faun. The Mosaic is a Pompeiian copy of the 4th C. BCE original.
Bronze, AE18, 340-280 BCE. Obverse: Laureate head of Apollo.
Reverse: Forepart of Man-headed Bull; star on shoulder; POMAION (of the Romans). [Crawford 1; Cf. SNG Copenhagen 474]
Man-headed Bull is most likely Acheloos -- the very River God who pursued Arethusa to Syracuse. [Anthony, Collecting Greek Coins, 1983, pp.40-41]
Q: What is the justification for the page title's description of this Greek coin of Magna Graecia as the "First Roman Coin?"
A: The first coins to be issued in the name of the early Roman Republic were minted in Campania during the period of treaty between Neapolis and Rome (326 BCE). At this time, bronze coins with a head of Apollo on the obverse and the forepart of a man-headed bull with Greek legend on the reverse were minted at Neapolis. [Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome, 1995, p.394]
