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Hadrianopolis AE26 Moushmov 2561 of Commodus

Commodus AE26 of Hadrianopolis, Thrace. AVT K AIL AVPH (KOMODOC), laureate, draped & cuirassed bust right / (HG COY MAPKIANOY ADRI) ANOPOLEITWN, Hercules battling with the horses of Diomedes, grasping hair of Diomedes. Jurukova 123.

Lot No.3561. Rough fine, but very rare.

$ 775.

Heracules naked, standing left, holding with his left hand the hair of the kneeing down Diomed. With right hand Hercules raising his club to hit the fell down enemy. At side are presenting the ferocious horses of Diomedes, which trying to run away. (Next to the horses - a wheel from the chariot.) Jurukova 123.

After Hercules had captured the Cretan Bull, Eurystheus sent him to get the man-eating mares of Diomedes, the king of a Thracian tribe called the Bistones, and bring them back to him in Mycenae. According to Apollodorus, Hercules sailed with a band of volunteers across the Aegean to Bistonia. There he and his companions overpowered the grooms who were tending the horses, and drove them to the sea. But by the time he got there, the Bistones had realized what had happened, and they sent a band of soldiers to recapture the animals. To free himself to fight, Hercules entrusted the mares to a youth named Abderos. Unfortunately, the mares got the better of young Abderos and dragged him around until he was killed. Meanwhile Hercules fought the Bistones, killed Diomedes, and made the rest flee. In honor of the slain Abderos, Hercules founded the city of Abdera. The hero took the mares back to Eurystheus, but Eurystheus set them free. The mares wandered around until eventually they came to Mount Olympos, the home of the gods, where they were eaten by wild beasts. Euripides gives two different versions of the story, but both of them differ from Apollodorus's in thatHercules seems to be performing the labor alone, rather than with a band of followers. In one, Diomedes has the four horses harnessed to a chariot, and Hercules has to bring back the chariot as well as the horses. In the other, Hercules tames the horses from his own chariot: He mounted on a chariot and tamed with the bit the horses of Diomedes, that greedily champed their bloody food at gory mangers with unbridled jaws, devouring with hideous joy the flesh of men. Euripides, Hercules, 380

Commodus was the son of Marcus Aurelius and was made co-emperor in 177 AD. He was a megalomaniac who fancied himself the reincarnation of Hercules, and was killed in 192 AD.