PISIDIA ISINDA bronze 1st century BC

Description

Isinda was a town near the southern Anatolian coast not far from the modern town of Antalya.

Pisidia was a stretch of west-central southern Anatolia and some hinterland. It had a reputation for trouble. Conquerors came and regretted it. They resisted Greek culture longer than all of their neighbors. They were formally part of various Hellenistic kingdoms before they passed to Rome. Resistance continued. Rome sent colonists, who gradually Latinized the region.

We think that our culture grew out of the culture of Greece because it was in Greece (and in China) that people started thinking about how things could be different than they were in a world where everything was dangerous and might made right. They also established principles of artistic expression that we still use today. We see this approach to art in their coins.

Ancient Coins includes Greek and Roman coins and those of neighbors and successors, geographically from Morocco and Spain all the way to Afghanistan. Date ranges for these begin with the world’s earliest coins of the 8th century BC to, in an extreme case, the end of Byzantine Empire, 1453 AD.