Ballspielerinnen auf thessalischen Münzen. Ein Zeitvertreib als öffentliche Angelegenheit?

Abstract

A series of silver oboloi from Larisa (late 5th c. B.C.) depict a young woman on the back side playing with a ball in various postures. She is commonly identified with the eponymous nymph of the polis, primarily because of the testimony of the Suda stating that Larisa drowned in the river Peneios during a ball game. However, the back side of one of the silver coins from the city of Trikka, stamped in the same period, depicts also a young woman dropping a ball. Despite the similarity this image cannot represent the same mythological figure. In a wider perspective ancient Greek literary and iconographic traditions reveal the theme of maidens playing with a ball as a widespread symbolic topos of their attractiveness by emphasizing the graceful motion. Bearing this in mind one can notice that many Thessalian coin images of the Classical period concur in focusing frequently on appealing gender roles regarding women as well as men of nubile age. Hence this paper argues that these coin images from Thessaly advertise role models shared all over the Greek world visualizing by this means a kind of landscape identity: not only to be proud of its famous horses but also of its beautiful and brave young people.

Keywords

• ball games
• coinage
• Larisa
• Thessaly
• women