archaicwonder:Tetradrachm minted on Tenedos, (Mysia, Islands off Troas) c. 100-70 BC The coin fea
archaicwonder: Tetradrachm minted on Tenedos, (Mysia, Islands off Troas) c. 100-70 BC The coin features a janiform, laureate head of Zeus and the diademed head of Hera. On the reverse TENEDIWN is inscribed above a double axe (labrys). Below is the monogram of PA and bunch of grapes. Below on the right are caps of the Dioscouri (Castor and Pollux) and all is surrounded by a laurel wreath. The early coins of Tenedos bore janiform heads similar to the one here, but on those the male head was bare and without a laurel wreath. Those heads portrayed two characters from a local legend: Tenes and, probably, his young step-mother and lover, Philonome. However, even in ancient times the combination of the janiform, male/female head and the double axe on the reverse gave rise to tales of the punishment for adultery, and by the end of the 5th century the janiform head on the coins of Tenedos was transformed into one of Zeus and Hera. After a long break when the only silver coins struck were posthumous Lysimachus tetradrachms, Tenedos resumed minting silver during the 1st century BC with a series of tetradrachms and drachms, like the present example. These coins are uniformly very rare. Alexandria Troas (“Alexandria of the Troad”) is an ancient Greek city of Mysia on the Aegean Sea near the northern tip of Turkey’s western coast, a little south of island of Tenedos (modern Bozcaada). Tenedos is mentioned in both the Iliad and the Aeneid. In the Aeneid, Tenedos is the site where the Greeks hid their fleet near the end of the Trojan War in order to trick the Trojans into believing the war was over and into taking the Trojan Horse within their city walls. -- source link