New Evidence for the Identification Of

8/11/2019 New Evidence for the Identification Of

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DEREK R. SMITH42

continuerai donc de prendre la tte des statres pour celle de Pallas ce quelle

a d reprsenter dans lantiquit et rpresente encore de nos jours.2

Imhoof-Blumers view prevailed for over a century, but in 1996 Peter

Blomberg, without knowing of the new coin, revived the debate and providedfurther arguments for identifying the helmeted head on the staters as Aphrodite.3

As Lenormant had done, he stressed that in the 5th century Greek cities did not

display minor deities on their coins, but their principal deities; at Corinth, this

was Aphrodite. Moreover, it is generally accepted that the drachms of Corinth

depict the unhelmeted head of Aphrodite, and Blomberg noted that other

contemporary Greek mints did not vary the deity depicted between

denominations. He provided examples from Corinth of the association of

Aphrodite with Pegasos, the obverse type of the Corinthian silver. If the deity

were Athena, she would probably be Athena Chalinitis, who is attested atCorinth; but Blomberg noted that no trace of her or of her temple has been

found at Corinth prior to the Roman era, while her main accomplishment, the

development of the bridle, is not alluded to on Corinthian staters.4

In 2001 Stefan Ritter reasserted the claims of Athena.5He admitted that the

assumption that Athena served as the main protective city goddess for Greek

cities other than Athens was shaped by the dominance of Athenian material in

the surviving literary, iconographic, and epigraphic record, and, although there

is good evidence that Athena was the main protecting deity for many other

cities, he conceded that her role may have been different in Peloponnesian citiessuch as Sparta and Corinth where a warlike Aphrodite might have served this

function. He agreed that the choice of Athena for Corinthian staters would be

unexpected as Corinth was a principal commercial rival of Athens, which

already depicted Athena on its coinage. But he concluded that the question

2 F. Imhoof-Blumer, Monnaies Grecques (Paris-Leipzig, 1883), pp. 158-9 (Imhoof-Blumers

italics). Similar arguments in F. Imhoof-Blumer and P. Gardner, A Numismatic Commentary on

Pausanias(London, 1887, repr. from JHS1885, 1886, 1887; repr. Chicago, Argonaut Inc., 1964),

pp. 25-7, with a list of relevant coins showing the statue of Aphrodite without a helmet. This

important series of coins furnishes complete proof,...,of the type of statue of Aphrodite which stood

on the Corinthian acropolis Lenormants idea that the helmeted head on the early autonomous

coins of Corinth is that of the armed Aphrodite must be given up, seeing that Pausanias is the only

writer who speaks of a statue of armed Aphrodite at Corinth, and it is certain that the figure seen by

him was not helmeted: there is, therefore, no evidence of the existence at Corinth of a helmeted

Aphrodite.3 P.E. Blomberg, On Corinthian Iconography. The bridled winged horse and and the helmeted

female head in the sixth century B.C. (Boreas 25; Uppsala, 1996), pp. 67-99. Favourable review by

B. Fehr, Gnomon72 (2000), pp. 84-5. Further examples of Aphrodite associated with a Corinthian

helmet, sometimes with other armour, are offered by J. Flemberg, Venus Armata. Studien zurbewaffneten Aphrodite in der griechisch-rmischen Kunst(Uppsala, 1989), Abb. 16, 22, 23, 26-8.

4Pindar Ol. 13.83 mentions an Athena Hippia who may have preceded Athena Chalinitis.5S. Ritter, Athena in Archaic Corinth: the Creation of an Iconography in S. Deacy and A. Villing

(eds),Athena in the Classical World(Leiden, 2001), pp. 143-62.


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APHRODITE ON STATERS OF CORINTH 43

turned on iconography, and, following Imhoof-Blumer, argued that the

Corinthian helmet appeared exclusively on the head of Athena. Ritter concluded

that the Corinthians would have adopted a Corinthian helmet for Athena in order

to distinguish their protecting deity from the Attic-helmeted Athena of Athens.Ritter was also obliged to accept that early staters of Lapethus on Cyprus which

depict female deities on both sides, one in an Attic helmet, the other in a

Corinthian, showed Athena on both sides, rather than, as would be natural, two

different deities; and, if two female deities are represented, on Cyprus one of

them is likely to be Aphrodite.

The new Hadrianic coin supports Pausanias, Lenormant and Blomberg, and

shows that the statue of Aphrodite on Acrocorinth may well have had a

Corinthian helmet in Roman times and earlier, although the 'Capua type' pose of

the statue depicted on the Acrocorinth series could not have been made earlierthan the second half of the fourth century, after Praxiteles.6

It remains to explain why the statue is not helmeted on the other Corinthian

coins of the Imperial period which depict it. The answer may be that an armed

Aphrodite had largely become an anachronism by the Roman period, when her

original warlike attributes had either been eliminated or reduced to purely

decorative features, while her role as the goddess of love was emphasized.

Many Hellenistic authors express surprise at martial features associated with

Aphrodite.7At Roman Corinth then, most of the engravers either were uncertain

of the exact nature of the statue on Acrocorinth or deliberately omitted thehelmet in order to present Aphrodite unambiguously to a public which was not

aware of her martial past. This engraver working under the emperor Hadrian

preferred the helmeted depiction.

6 C.M. Havelock, The Aphrodite of Knidos and Her Successors: A Historical Review of the

Female Nude in Greek Art(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995) pp. 95-8.7J. Flemberg, From War-Goddess to Love-Goddess: the transformations of the armed Aphrodite,

in G. Johansson (ed.),Aphrodite. The Making of a Goddess(Lund, 2005), p. 41.


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HIND, PHASIAN SILVER COINS

SMITH, APHRODITE ON STATERS OF CORINTH

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Enlarged detail of reverse

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New Evidence for the Identification Of