Ancient Coin Stories

In retrospect, I wish I had visited the ruins of Orchomenos while I was in Greece. I certainly wasn’t far from the site, but I had restricted myself to more well-known ruins. Certainly, the position of the Orchomenos ruins is stunning.

Orchomenos was founded in legend by a guy named Orchomenos, who was the son of Lykaon, who for some stupid reason killed and cooked his son Nyktimos in order to test whether Zeus was all knowing. A long line of kings of Orchomenos followed, and it appears that the city was still a monarchy in the Peloponnesian War.

Homer mentions Orchomenos as being abundant in sheep.

In 313 BCE, Orchomenos was taken by Kassander. Perhaps this coin was around during that time.

The depictions on the coin are interesting. We’re not sure whether the advancing character is Orchomenos or Arkas, who also exists in legend related to Orchomenos.

Kallisto, who is on the obverse of the coin, was a daughter of Lykaion. She had the hots for Artemis, but Zeus disguised himself as he and raped her. Their son was Arkas.

Hera, who wasn’t fond of every woman with whom Zeus cheated on her, turned Kallisto into a bear. One day, Arkas was walking in the woods when he came across his mother, now a bear. When she rushed toward him in excitement, Arkas moved to shoot her with an arrow, but Zeus prevented this from happening and put both in the stars as Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.