Both the coin of Antoninus Pius from Abonuteichus and that of Caracalla from Nicomedia feature the serpent deity Glycon, a long-haired snake said by Lucian of Samosata to have been the invention of a fraud named #Alexander, who planted a serpent in a temple and equipped it with a puppet head and wig to convince locals that the prophecy of Asclepius returning in serpent form had been fulfilled. Though Lucian ridiculed the cult as a money-making scheme, the very presence of Glycon on civic coinage shows that the deity was embraced as part of local pride and religious identity: in Abonuteichus, Glycon’s image proclaimed the city as the birthplace of the god and its cult, while by Caracalla’s time, the wider spread of Glycon’s worship across the empire made its appearance on coins a statement of prestige and legitimacy. In both cases, the choice to depict Glycon reflects how provincial communities used coinage to promote their own distinct religious traditions within the Roman worlds
#Antoninus_Pius
#Caracalla #Nicomedia #Glycon
#numismatics #numismatist #numismatica #rarecoins #oldcoins #worldcoins #coincollecting #coincollection #gold #metaldetecting #silvercoins #coin #romancoin #ancientcoins #ancientgreekcoins #money #history
#temple#roman #greece #alsadeekalsadouk #الصديق_الصدوق