Nikopolis AE27 Moushmov 1014 of Septimius Severus
Septimius Severus AE28 of Nikopolis ad Istrum. Magistrate Gallus. AV K CEP CEVHPOC, laureate head right / VP AV GALLOV NIKOPOLITWN PROC ICTPW, Hercules subduing the Cretan Bull left, bow in ex.
Lot No.3744. nVF.
$ 245.
The Cretan Bull
After the complicated business with the
Stymphalian Birds, Hercules easily disposed of
the Cretan Bull. At that time, Minos, King of Crete, controlled
many of the islands in the seas
around Greece, and was such a powerful ruler that the
Athenians sent him tribute every year. There
are many bull stories about Crete. Zeus, in the shape of a
bull, had carried Minos' mother Europa to
Crete, and the Cretans were fond of the sport of bull-leaping,
in which contestants grabbed the
horns of a bull and were thrown over its back. Minos himself,
in order to prove his claim to the
throne, had promised the sea-god Poseidon that he would
sacrifice whatever the god sent him from
the sea. Poseidon sent a bull, but Minos thought it was too
beautiful to kill, and so he sacrificed
another bull. Poseidon was furious with Minos for breaking his
promise. In his anger, he made the
bull rampage all over Crete, and caused Minos' wife Pasiphae
to fall in love with the animal. As a
result, Pasiphae gave birth to the Minotaur, a monster with
the head of a bull and the body of a
man. Minos had to shut up this beast in the Labyrinth, a huge
maze underneath the palace, and
every year he fed it prisoners from Athens. When Hercules
got to Crete, he easily wrestled the bull
to the ground and drove it back to King Eurystheus.
Eurystheus let the bull go free. It wandered
around Greece, terrorizing the people, and ended up in
Marathon, a city near Athens. Hercules
drives the bull back to Mycenae The Athenian hero Theseus
tied up some loose ends of this story.
He killed the Cretan Bull at Marathon. Later, he sailed to
Crete, found his way to the center of the
Labyrinth, and killed the Minotaur.
Septimius Severus was a general of great skill. Born in Africa in 146 AD, he married Julia Domna, it is said, who had a soothsayer's prediction that she would be married to an emperor. After Pertinax was killed and Didius Julianus won the throne by offering the greatest amount of money to the Praetorians, Septimius, by then the governor of Upper Pannonia, hurried to Rome with his Legions. Julianus was already dead by the time he got there in 193 AD. He disbanded the Praetorians, and then defeated his rival Pescennius Niger in the east, then Clodius Albinus in the west in 197 AD, finally dying of natural causes in Britain in 211 AD.
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