4th century BCE
AE 16 mm, 4.15 g, 1 h
Veiled head of Demeter to right, wearing wreath of grain ears.
Rev. KIΣ Horseman, wearing chlamys, on horse galloping right, raising his right hand in salute; below, dolphin right.
Plankenhorn, Mysien, p. 70, 6 (this coin). SNG Paris 163-4. Stauber & Barth 6, l (this coin). Von Fritze 621
Ex collection of G. Plankenhorn
Kisthene was on the western coast of modern Turkey just across the island of Lesbos. The city was mentioned by Aeschylos in Prometheus Bound:
When you cross the stream that borders the two continents,
[You will turn] to the flaming east, which is trodden by the sun,
Crossing the roar of the Black Sea, until you reach
The Gorgonian plain of Cisthene, where
The Phorkides live, those three long-lived
Young women in the shape of swans, who share one eye
And one tooth – the sun never looks at them
With his beams, nor the moon at night.
Near them are their sisters, the three winged
Snaky-haired Gorgons hateful to humans,
Whom no mortal can look upon and live.
That’s the kind of thing you should guard against.
By the time of Strabo, it was deserted. Earlier, though, it was an important source of copper – presumably what made it easy to mint this coin. Pliny the Elder also listed it as no longer existing.
Recently, ruins of the city were found and are being excavated.