1000 Drachmes 1987, Greece
| in Krause book | Number: 202a |
| Years of issue: | 01.07.1987 |
| Edition: | |
| Signatures: | Unknown signature |
| Serie: | 1983 - 1987 Issue |
| Specimen of: | 01.07.1987 |
| Material: | Cotton fiber |
| Size (mm): | 158 x 77 |
| Printer: | Printing works department of Bank of Greece (Idryma Trapezis tis Ellados), Athens |
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Description
Watermark:
The Charioteer of Delphi, also known as Heniokhos is one of the best-known statues surviving from Ancient Greece, and is considered one of the finest examples of ancient bronze statues. The life-size (1.8 m.) statue of a chariot driver was found in 1896 at the Sanctuary of Apollo in Delphi. It is now in the Delphi Archaeological Museum.
Avers:
Apollo. The western pediment of the temple of Zeus at Olympia. Marble. 60s V century BCE. Olympia, Archaeological Museum.
The Apollon of Olympia was part of the group of sculptures found in the west pediment of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. Its original location also provides it with another name: the Apollon from the west pediment. It is one of the most important statues of the Severe style or early Classical style, dating from ca. 460 BCE. The statue is currently in the archaeological museum in Olympia.
The sculptures of the west pediment depicted the battle of the Lapiths against the Centaurs, following the wedding feast of Peirithous and Hippodamia. The battle of the Lapiths - legendary inhabitants of Thessaly - against the Centaurs - wild forest inhabitants with a human upper half and the body of a horse - frequently acted as a mythological metaphor for the conflicts between the Greeks and the Barbarians. Most of the figures in this turbulent battle scene were discovered during the German excavations of 1875, led by the archaeologist Georg Treu.
The juvenile Apollo stood in the centre of the pediment, directing his gaze toward the Lapiths. With his outstretched right arm, he seemed to order an end to the iniquity: the Centaurs had betrayed the Lapiths' hospitality, drunk to excess, and kidnapped their women. Nevertheless, his inclusion appears to be merely figurative; the combatants seem ignorant of his presence, with no other figure in the pediment referring, either in their motion or gesture, to the appearance of the god.
The back of the sculpture, which had not been visible to viewers, is notable for being more roughly worked than the front. This difference has provided modern scholars with information on the methods used by Ancient Greek sculptors, and contributed to the debate regarding whether the later Hermes of Olympia is an original Greek sculpture, or a Roman copy.
Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in classical Greek and Roman religion and Greek and Roman mythology. The national divinity of the Greeks, Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, music and dance, truth and prophecy, healing and diseases, the Sun and light, poetry, and more. He is the son of Zeus and Leto, and the twin brother of Artemis, goddess of the hunt. Seen as the most beautiful god and the ideal of the kouros (ephebe, or a beardless, athletic youth), Apollo is considered to be the most Greek of all the gods. 
In lower right corner is the Olympic Didrachma (Stater) from region of Elis.
Elis, Stater ca. 340 BCE, 110th Olympiad, silver, 12.20 g. Laureate head of Zeus r. Rev. F – A / A – P Eagle, with closed wings, perched r. on the head of a ram.
Very rare.
This stater from the temple mint of Zeus is a perfect example of the fine workmanship of Olympic coinage of the early Hellenistic period, bearing a forceful head of Zeus and a vigilant eagle perched upon the head of a ram. Even within the repeating themes at Olympia the engravers celebrated varieties, including, on the Zeus/eagle issues, showing the eagle perched variously upon the back of a recumbent ram, a hare, a fawn, a stag’s head, a snake, an Ionic column capital, or a simple base.
One of the few ancient traditions that survived to be reborn in the modern world is the quadrennial Olympic Games. Though the religious aspect disappeared with the eclipse of Greco-Roman paganism, the spirit of athletic competition among nations has survived intact. Every four years the world’s attention turns to these great games, as it did in Olympia so many centuries ago. The coinage issued for these games had numerous purposes – as vehicles for commerce, as a source of income through a mandatory exchange, as a showcase for the works of gifted engravers, as souvenirs for visitors, and as celebrations of Zeus and Hera, who presided over the Sanctuary at Olympia and the games themselves. A narrow range of images dominate Olympic silver coinage, including the portraits of Zeus, his consort Hera and the nymph Olympia, the eagle and thunderbolt as symbols of Zeus, Nike as a symbol of victory, and the laurel wreath as an allusion to the games. Olympic staters appear to have been produced only to coincide with the games, and it has been demonstrated through Charles Seltman’s careful die study (1921) that two separate mints contributed, one perhaps at the Temple of Zeus and another at the Temple of Hera. The mint of Hera probably was combined with that of Zeus some time toward the end of the 4th Century B.C., and perhaps a century later the Olympic mint may have been moved to the regional capital of Elis. (www.icollector.com)
Denominations in numerals are in three corners and centered. In words centered, above.
Revers:
The Temple of Hera (Heraion) in the sanctuary of Zeus, in Olympia is the most important monument of the early Doric. This is one of the oldest Doric peripters, from whom not only foundations, but also the remains of the colonnade, the basement of the walls and fragments of ceramic ornaments have come down to us. However, it should be borne in mind that the temple was rebuilt three times, and we have in front of us only the remains of the third of them.
The oldest temple dating from the end of the VIII century. BC e., was a rectangular cell with an inner row of supports and pronaos; he did not yet have an external colonnade and was according to the plan several subsequent ones. During the construction of the second temple, the area of the structure was increased, the foundations were laid out from correctly hewn quadras. He had a pronaos, naos and opistode (the earliest surviving one), surrounded by a colonnade (6X16 columns). This building refers to the very end of the VII or the beginning of the VI century BCE. (recent works on this issue date back to the beginning of the VI century BC). During the third restructuring at the beginning of the VI century. BC e. the basis of the plan of the second temple was preserved.
The third Heraion stood on a two-stage base measuring 18.75x50 m. in stylobate. The walls of the temple were laid out on a 1 m. high pedestal made of limestone-shell rock. The outer side of the basement consisted of high plates placed on the edge - orthostats, the inner - of four horizontal rows of quadras. The beds of these quadras were buried, and they were in contact with each other only with smoothly hewn edges. The part of the wall lying on the basement was laid out from raw brick. To serve as a reliable support for the ceiling, it had to have a significant thickness, which also explains the large thickness of the basement. The remains of this raw masonry during excavations were discovered in the form of a thick layer of clay covering the floor of the pump and porticos (it was she who preserved the famous statue of Hermes by Praxiteles, which once stood on one of the pedestals in the temple). In the basement of the walls you can see special grooves that served to establish wooden ties - a kind of half-timbered house, fastening the raw masonry of the upper part. Outside, the walls were plastered. Nothing remained of the overlap. It was probably wooden.
The arrangement of columns in Heraion is notable for the doric of later times: the internal and external columns of the temple are located on common axes. This is probably due to the need to connect the outer portico and the wooden frame of the cella in the raw-wood construction.
The outer columns of Heraion, some of which have survived to our time, vary greatly in the proportions and shape of the capitals. The fact that Pausanius in the II century. BCE. I saw one oak column in the description house, which suggested that initially all the columns of the third church were also wooden and only gradually replaced with stone, each time in the style of the corresponding time. In any case, the style differences and sizes of the columns are so diverse that their simultaneity is beyond doubt. As they collapsed, the columns were replaced by new ones, reflecting in their forms the development of architecture starting from the VII century BCE. and ending with the era of Roman rule.
The surviving columns are composed of two or more drums; the material for them (and other stone parts of the temple) was a shell rock covered with plaster. Their diameter ranges from 1.01 to 1.29 m. The number of flutes and their depth are also different. The oldest surviving columns, the second from the western corner, has 16 flutes and a smooth neck under an echinas of an early archaic form. Her entasis is very significant. This is the only column that can be attributed to the VII century. BCE. (archisto.info .rus)
The Discobolus of Myron ("discus thrower", Greek: Δισκοβόλος, Diskobólos) is a Greek sculpture completed at the start of the Classical Period, figuring a youthful ancient Greek athlete throwing discus, about 460–450 BC. The original Greek bronze is lost but the work is known through numerous Roman copies, both full-scale ones in marble, which was cheaper than bronze, such as the first to be recovered, the Palombara Discobolus, and smaller scaled versions in bronze.
A discus thrower depicted is about to release his throw: "by sheer intelligence", Kenneth Clark observed in The Nude, "Myron has created the enduring pattern of athletic energy. He has taken a moment of action so transitory that students of athletics still debate if it is feasible, and he has given it the completeness of a cameo." The moment thus captured in the statue is an example of rhythmos, harmony and balance. Myron is often credited with being the first sculptor to master this style. Naturally, as always in Greek athletics, the Discobolus is completely nude. His pose is said to be unnatural to a human, and today considered a rather inefficient way to throw the discus. Also there is very little emotion shown in the discus thrower's face, and "to a modern eye, it may seem that Myron's desire for perfection has made him suppress too rigorously the sense of strain in the individual muscles," Clark observes. The other trademark of Myron embodied in this sculpture is how well the body is proportioned, the symmetria.
The potential energy expressed in this sculpture's tightly wound pose, expressing the moment of stasis just before the release, is an example of the advancement of Classical sculpture from Archaic. The torso shows no muscular strain, however, even though the limbs are outflung.
Denominations in numerals are in three corners, in words lower, centered.
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