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οὐδέ κέ τίς μιν γηθήσειεν ἰδών, οὐδ᾽ εἰ θεὸς ἀντιάσειεν
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derspatchel and I saw this coin at the MFA on Friday night. It's a silver tetradrachm from Akragas, 414–413 BCE; it's on display in the new Gallery of Ancient Coins. The reverse is the most beautiful depiction of Skylla I think I have ever seen.
It looks even better in person.
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That's Skylla. In the Odyssey, she's a six-headed, dog-yelping sort of tentacle monster with triple rows of teeth, but in the tradition elaborated by Ovid in the Metamorphoses, she was a beautiful nymph changed by jealous Kirke's magic into a monstrous pack of dogs from the waist down. This depiction seems to combine both versions to—at least if you ask me—lovely effect. I'm sure it's a trick of the coining process and time, but I love how her fingers stretch out as long and fine as the spines of her tail. She looks more like a sea-goddess than a ship-wrecking beast.
(The strait of Skylla and Charybdis was traditionally located at the Strait of Messina, so it makes sense to me that at least one of them would appear on the coinage of Sicily.)
reminds me of this video
That is wrong in almost every conceivable way. Thank you.
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I covet it seriously. She looks like she is riding to hounds of the sea. The traditional metaphor for whitecaps is horses, but I am thinking of breakers as packs of dogs now, tumbling over one another, baying, Skylla the mistress of the hunt in their midst; they leap about her waist and below it she is all the sea.
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I don't know! I was just talking to you and that happened. (I said you were a good inspiration.)
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Nine
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I was very glad to find I could get an image online. We had less than half an hour to close, so we ran straight for the coins and we need to go back. It's an astonishing collection and it's full of discussion of coins, not just cabinets of pretty things, although it's got those, too.
(I mean, it has forgeries and erotic tokens and a bull-stamped aes signatum, which I had not ever seen in person before. And jewelry. And sliding drawers. And maps.)
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Nine
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I do not covet coins from the ancient world often, but this one, yes.
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