Messenia.,Mothone
Julia Domna. Augusta 193-217 CE
Æ 22mm, 4,50g
Draped bust right /
Athena standing right, holding spear and patera; shield at side.
BMC 2; BCD Peloponnesos –; SNG Copenhagen 539
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Messenia, Mothone
Caracalla, Augustus
Ca 198-208 CE
Assarion Bronze, 21mm, 4.02g, 5h
M AYPH ANTΩNINOC Laureate, draped and cuirassed bust of Caracalla to right, seen from behind.
Rev: ΜΟΘΩ-[ΝΑΙΩΝ] Athena standing facing, head to left, holding phiale in her outstretched right hand and spear with her left.
BCD Peloponnesos -. BCD Peloponnesos II 2824 (same obverse die). BMC -. Cf. NCP p. 68, 2 (type unrecorded for Caracalla). SNG Copenhagen –
Pausanias wrote:
“At Mothone is a temple of Athena Anemotis (Mistress of the Winds). Diomedes they say dedicated the statue of the goddess and gave her that surname (for violent unseasonable winds used to blow over the place and do much harm, but after Diomedes prayed to Athena, no disaster from fierce winds came to them).
Today, perhaps our best extant statue of Athena was found at the Villa Velletri. It dates from the 1st century CE and can be seen today in the Louvre. However, the movement of the arms in that statue are different than this coin.
Thus, everything we know about Athena Anemotis is from Pausanias. It is assumed that this coin depicts it, though it’s far from certain.