The representation of the body in the coins of Ancient Greece: gods and homeric heroes in the polis

Abstract

The aim of this article is to reconstruct the nature and the function of the human figure represented in the Greek coins of the archaic and classic period through the semantic retrieval of numismatic icon as a historical source. The study has developed across a process of diachronic and diatopic search of the monetary images belonging at two iconographic schemes in which appears the figure of the charioteer and that of the warrior promachos. The basic prerequisite of this procedure and the consequent method of analysis, is the analogy between the verbal and the iconic language, according to a linguistic approach that consider the logical links existing among the different parts of the coin. The results indicate that the numismatical Greek language is a technical lexicon designed to assure a wide and effective communication, in that the human figure poses a central role and an undoubted polysemic value. A language that takes as base the most archaic Hellenic religious feeling filtered and diffused in the troubled reality of the polis in the most various political forms. For these considerations, the human body represented in the Greek coins is identified outright by the concept of divinity and in what corresponds to the hero, submitted to the link of his supernatural luck, must be considered to be a divine personage.