Circa 400-350 BCE
AR Tetartemorion 6 mm, 0.17 g, 3 h
Bare female head to right.
Rev. Monogram of ΛΑΤΜ.
HN Online 962. Konuk, Latmos, 5 (O4/R5)
So tiny are these coins that they weren’t known until the 1980’s, when a hoard was presumably found that entered the market. Many of the specimens were well worn, but given the fact that no other city starts with “Latm” (the ‘m’ is formed of the lamda and the alpha) and that recent finds were very close to ancient Latmos, the attribution is no longer disputed.
Konuk wonders whether the shape of the monogram was designed to resemble nearby Mount Latmos, which per mythology was the home of Endymion. Well…some mythology – his resting place was disputed between Elis and Latmos/Herakleia (which superseded Latmos).
There are numerous legends of Endymion, but the most popular seems to be where Selene – goddess of the moon – falls in love with Endymion for his beauty. She therefore begs Zeus to put him to sleep and he obliges. In other tales Endymion does something to upset Zeus, and that gets him eternal sleep. Anyways, everyone agrees that he was asleep and Selene then came to his bed and “helped herself.” She did this over a period of time and had 50 daughters with him.
Some of the coinage of Latmos, which Konuk believes occurred over a relatively short period of time due to the small number of dies, has a male on the obverse. Konuk theorizes this could be the personification of Mount Latmos. My coin, however, has a young female. It certainly seems plausible to me that, since Latmos was famous in antiquity for its ancient temple to Endymion, that this could be Selene.
Konuk argues against this based on his belief that the male on the other coins is unlikely to be Endymion. He is typically depicted as a young shepherd, though admits that occurred in much later Roman art. Since the male could not be Endymion, he finds Selene unlikely. Personally, I find the simpler solution easier. Given that even Greek depictions of mythological characters wasn’t uniform, it seems likely that much later Roman art also deviated. On most of my 4th century Greek coins from cities that were famous for a particular temple, that character more often than not appears on their coins.
Relevant Resources
Link
The Coinage of Latmos