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Dionysus is the 6^th coin in this series, after: Ares, Poseidon, Hephaestus, Apollo and Zeus.

Donysus, also known as Bacchus, is the god of pleasure, fertility and wine. Satyrs (half humans and half goats) and maenads were his companions. On the reverse of the coin, a satyr is pouring wine to Silenus. Silenus, the chubby, obese, bald guy with horse ears and a tail was the most famous of the satyrs. Silenus the drunkard is the god of shepherds, vegetation and ecstatic joy. On my coin he drinks from a vessel that looks more like a medieval than an ancient Greek chalice. Why? Just for fun ;).
Near to Silenus,we see a typical Greek amphorae for transporting a wine and a gold krater (or crater) for mixing wine and water. On the krater, a large two-handled vase we see a symposium scene (in Greek: Συμπόσιον means to drinking together). In ancient Greece a symposium was the part of a banquet reserved only for men, that followed the main meal when drinking for pleasure was accompanied by music, dancing or conversation.

Dionysus lies on a huge cornucopia and he is obscenely swallowing a grape. With his other hand, he pours the wine not from a rhyton (a typical horn-shaped vessel for drinking wine at libations), but from a flat goblet called in Greek a kylix.

Maenads (or, according to Euripides’ famous tragedy, bacchantes), are dancing in the background. Their characters were directly taken from my own sketch of Cronus. I turned the innocent nymphs, hiding baby Zeus in cradles into bacchantes of the cult of god of wine.

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Ares and Mars, Niue 2021, 5 dollars, 2 oz, diameter 45 mm, antique finish high relief coin with resin insert, client and producer: Mint of Poland.

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I will not write much about this project, because its iconography is not complicated. There is less symbolism here than in the previous 4 coins of the series (see: Ares, Poseidon, Hephaestus and Apollo). Zeus, god of storms and lightning, flies among the clouds. Behind him we see the Mont Olympus. Atributes of Zeus are: eagle and aegis—the shield of Zeus and Athena, featuring the head of Medusa and made of Amalthea’s skin. Amalthea was the goat who suckled the infant Zeus.

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Everyone knows the myth of Prometheus, that is why no need to describe a detailed iconography. I will focus on the composition itself. Compared to rather static and classic compositions of modern collector coins, I prefer to surprise with dynamic composition and unusual perspective. Like in comic book art.

There are two versions of the myth of Prometheus. According to one of them, a vulture pecked Prometheus’s liver every day at sunrise. According to the other myth, it was an eagle (perhaps Ethon—the great Caucasian eagle), not a vulture… Finally, I chose the eagle because of its popularity in painted and sculpted artworks of Western European art.

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See my Ares, Poseidon and Hephaestus in the same series.

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Apollo fell in love with beautiful nymph Daphne but she rejected his advances. Not discouraged Apollo chased her until she lost strength. Just before giving her a big kiss, Daphne asked her father, the god of the river, to transform her into a laurel tree. On my coin the scene depicts the moment, when Daphne changes into a laurel tree. On the background we see: Daphne’s father, an amphora (the symbol of god of the river), the waterfall and the river.

I like when my projects are not so simple as they could be. Sometimes I try to add something unusual, something surprising, not always obvious at a glance. Just for playing a game . Poseidon was gliding over the waves like a surfer and Apollo and Daphne are dancing Argentine tango. They are in the very specific position and this is a real figure of Argentine tango. It’s very emotional dance… like love.

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Since 16^th century in art we commonly see Atlas holding the Earth on his shoulders, but according to the mythology he should bear the celestial sphere. My Atlas is just a clumsy muscle man. The athlete loses the balance and the Sky is about to fall on his head.

Titan Atlas had numerous children. His seven daughters—Pleiades: Alcyone, Electra, Celaeno, Maia, Merope, Sterope, Taygete (their names in Greek appear on the coin) committed suicide when her father was condemned by Zeus to carry the heavens on his shoulders. Then Zeus turned them into the stars. The cluster of Pleiades is a part of the Taurus constellation, close to the Auriga and Perseus constellations. We see all of them on the Sky map above the Titan’s head.

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Svetovid or Svetovit (“sacred lord”) was the main deity of the Polabian Slavs. He was a god of war, light and power. Some researchers say that Sventovid was the same god as Perun (see: the first coin in this series). But Perun, until the times of Vladimir the Great, was an amorphous god. First known statues of Perun was erected by Vladimir, however Svetovid, according to Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus, was always sculpted as a four-headed god. On my drawing Svetovid has faces wrinkled as if they were carved in old wood. We don’t know if we see a real organic god standing in front of us or a simple wood sculpture…
The attributes of Svetovid:
— a horn filled by the priest during the holidays with honey – this fortune-telling was supposed to foretell an abundance of harvests;
— a sword—in my design it is decorated with typical Slavic ornament;
— a white horse that foretold victory or defeat before the battle, depending on whether it was starting to gallop from the right or left leg.

Behind Svetovid on the right we see a warrior on horseback: the horse starts from its right hoof! On the left side of the reverse, I reproduced a scene taken from the painting by Józef Ryszkiewicz, The Wróżba przed bitwą (Devination before the battle). But I changed some details of this painting, for exemple: instead of a man with a hat made of an animal’s head, I drew a Slavic warrior in a chain mail.

There was a problem with the symbol of Svetovid on the insert. On the reverse of Perun the sign engraved on wooden instert was indeed an actual symbol of Perun used by the tribes of the Slavs. The slavic symbol of Svetovid was swastika, the common solar sign. As we know swastika became a nazi emblem, so I invented my own neutral symbol of Svetovid: four petals of flowers (harvest), symbolizing faces looking at the four corners of the world.

The obverse is the same for all coins in this series. See: Perun.

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Third coin in this series after Ares and Poseidon. See fourth coin: Apollo.

They said about this coin:

„Incredible Silver Coin.” Backyard Bullion on YT

Mr. Hephaestus, a big muscle man is working in the forge. This room seems to be too small for him. He is a little clumsy—according to mythology, he was “shrivelled of foot”.

Hephaestus is forging a sword. His clumsy fingers are holding the pincers of the blacksmith. Behind him we see the armour, sword and famous shield of Achilles, and by his right leg the helmet of Achilles. Behind Hephaestus’ back are the blacksmith’s tools and the thunderbolts of Zeus.

On the initial sketch the hammer strike looks different, but it seemed to unnatural to me. So I changed the hand position on the final design. See below.

The shield of Achilles was drawn as a separate element. I drew it according to the description in the Homer’s Iliad. The first circle is the sea, earth, sky, sun, moon and stars. Then there is a circle with two cities. On the one side we see a dancing wedding procession, two men quarreling over payment for a murder. On the other side of this circle: a city siege. The next circle depicts the harvest, cattle, and vine growing. Next are girls and boys dancing the Ariadne dance that Daedalus invented. The last circle is fulfilled by Oceanus—the outer sea.

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Titan Cronus, sometimes confused with Chronos (personification of time), was the god of agriculture and keeper of the harvests. His attribute was a sickle or a scythe.

Cronus was the son of Gaia and Uranus—personifications of Earth and Sky. Gaia and Uranus were not only the parents of twelve Titans but also of bizarre giants: Hecatoncheires (Hundred-Handers) and Cyclops. Out of fear of the power of his deformed children, Uranus hid them in his wife’s body, thus condemning her to a great pain. In revenge, Gaia gave Cronus a sickle. Then the youngest of Titans castrated his own father, knocking him off the pedestal. Crippled and furious Uranus foretold to his son, that he was destined to be overcome by his own descendant. From now on, Cronus swallowed all his children, as they were born. However Rhea, Cronus’s clever wife, saved newborn Zeus. Once he had grown up, Zeus released his siblings from the insides of Cronus. With his brothers and sisters he thrown Cronus and other Titans into Tartarus.

On the coin: Cronus, god of the harvest is cutting a bunch of grapes. This is an allusion to the mutilation of Uranus with a sickle.

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Perun was for the Slavs, like Zeus or Jupiter for the ancient Greeks and Romans. He was the supreme god in Slavic mythology, the ruler of the heavens, storms, thunder and lightning. He lived in the oak forests. The oak was considered a sacred tree by Slavs — it symbolized the strength, life and longevity.

“Piorun” in Polish means lightning.

The attributes of Perun are: lightning, arrows (like lightning), oak, Slavic ax, and eagle—the king of the sky. The wolf symbolizes Veles, the god of the Slavic underworld defaeted by Perun.

Some scientists suggest Perun’s analogies with Thor—Germanic or Norse god of thunder and storm. It’s probably due to appearance of the Varangians (Scandinavian Vikings) Kievan Rus’ (today areas of Ukraine and Russia). Originally there were no statues devoting to Perun. He was a god living only in the trees. First statues of Perun were erected during the time of Vladimir the Great in Kievan Rus’.

The interlace knots under the feet of Perun apparently are not typical for Eastern European culture. This pattern seems to have a Celtic origin. During the great migration of early Middle Ages, Germans from Jutland (or from Scania) drove the Celts out from today’s German territory. However the Celtic culture had a huge impact on these newly arrived Germanic tribes. At the same time, archeologists found the traces of Celtic culture not only in today’s Germany, but also in Slavic Central Europe, including today’s Poland territory and… in the Crimea! These knots are Celtic, German or Slavic? Who knows…

In the next coins in the series I will draw more typical Slavic motifs.

The insert is made of oak wood and was engraved with a Slavic symbol of Perun.

On the obverse we have: an eagle, a large oak tree (two Perun symbols) and a wolf with a bear (two symbols of Veles, defaeted by Perun ). In general eagle, wolf, bear, oak are also the symbols of the slavic primary forest. The iconography of the obverse became so universal and could match other Slavic themes.