PEGASUS ON ANCIENT COINS

THE DREAM OF flight has always held a powerful grip on the human imagination. Pegasus, the flying horse of Greek mythology, symbolizes that dream, and this winged white stallion appears on many ancient coins. A recent search for the term Pegasus on the CoinArchivesPro database (which documents over two million auction records during the past two decades) produced 25,155 hits! There are hundreds of different types, extending over eight centuries. In what follows, I describe a selection that I hope will be most interesting to CoinWeek readers.

The first reference to Pegasus in literature is Hesiod's Theogony, dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. The magical flying horse and his brother Chrysaor, a flying boar, were born from the blood of the monster Medusa when the hero Perseus cut off her head:

Pegasus appears at the very dawn of ancient coinage on an electrum trite (one-third stater, 4.75 grams) from an uncertain mint in Ionia on the eastern shore of the Aegean Sea.

 
Corinth Stater. Image: NAC / CoinWeek.

 
Carthaginians in Sicily and North Africa. Decadrachm, Carthage
circa 260. Image: Numismatica Ars Classica / CoinWeek.

One of the largest and heaviest ancient coins depicting Pegasus is a silver dekadrachm (or five-shekel piece) of 38 grams (more than the 31-gram troy ounce!) issued by the Carthaginians in Sicily, probably to pay mercenaries during the First Punic War. The cryptic Punic inscription is b'rst (in the land). This muscular Pegasus may be copied from a stater of Agathocles, King of Syracuse (317-289 BCE).

To read the complete article, see:
When Horses Flew: Pegasus on Ancient Coins (https://coinweek.com/when-horses-flew-pegasus-on-ancient-coins/)

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