A lost story

[kirispupis]

Some time ago, I picked up this interesting piece from Phalanna.

Phalanna, Thessaly
Mid-late 4th century BCE
Ae Chalkous 14.8mm, 4.4gms
Obv: PELORES; head of Zeus Peloris right
Rev: FALLA-NN; The nymph Phalanna seated right on chair, feeding stork to right
BCD Thessaly II 574
Ex-BCD Collection

 

The coinage of Phalanna is not rare, and is actually perhaps the most common Thessalian city, which is all the more odd because as far as we can tell it was a pipsqueak of a town. A few ancient sources mentioned it, so we know it existed, but it was far from being a power even in Thessaly. However, it issued a tremendous number of types. There is some speculation that it was a common coinage across northern Thessaly, given its vast coinage. However, what made me pickup this example was the reverse.

Per the agreed-upon attribution, it depicts the nymph Phalanna, sitting on a chair, feeding a stork. One thing I've learned about Greek coinage is everything on these coins was deliberate. The engraver didn't just happen to have a thing for storks and so engraved a woman feeding one. There was a story behind this.

I want to know the story. So, my first question was: who was Phalanna?

Phalanna was the daughter of Tyro, who in turn was the daughter of King Salmonaios of Elis and Alkidike, daughter of King Alaios of Arkadia. Tyro's descendants numbered among the major players in ancient Greece, such as Aison, the father of Jason, who headed up the Argonauts and who unfortunately pissed off Medea. Tyro was an interesting woman, but we're most curious about Phalanna, and about her we know nothing other than we assume she founded Phalanna or had a major part in it, since the city was named after her.

So, we now come to the stork. Since I couldn't find any stories about Phalanna and a stork (or a heron or crane), I turned to the literature. Back then, there was no such thing as copyright-infringement, so cities commonly stole each other's stories. Many are claimed by multiple cities, so I looked there.

Indeed, storks are well attested in ancient literature, far more than cranes and herons.

My first destination was Artemidoros, to see how people dreamed of storks.

Quote

Cranes and storks seen congregating inf locks signify attacks by brigands or enemies. If they appear in a dream in winter, they bring on a storm, and if in summer, a drought. Seen in isolation and singly, cranes and storks are auspicious for travel abroad and return from travel, since these birds set off on their own travels and migrate at the turn of the seasons. And they are auspicious also for marriage and the procreation of children, because they produce their young from a monogamous union: storks are particularly apposite for the procreation of children because of the care that the offspring take of their parents.

I found this interesting - and I definitely recommend a read of Artemidoros in general - so I moved on to Aristotle, who had a thing for critters.

Quote

It is a common story of the stork that the old birds are fed by their grateful progeny.

So, not much more than what Artemidoros reported. After finding nothing in Pliny, I turned to Aelian, perhaps the best ancient source on animals. There, I learned a lot about storks.

Quote

Storks have a very clever device for warding off the bats that would damage their eggs: one touch from the bats turns them to wind-eggs and makes them infertile. Accordingly, this is the remedy they use to prevent this happening. They lay the leaves of a plane-tree upon their nests, and directly the bats come near the storks, they are benumbed and become incapable of doing harm.

Quote

When their parents have grown old, Storks tend them voluntarily and with studied care; yet there is no law of man that bids them do so; the cause of their actions is Nature. And the same birds love their offspring too. Here is the proof: when the full-grown bird is in want of food to give to its still un fledged and tender chicks, some accident having occasioned a shortage, the Stork disgorges its food of yesterday and feeds its young. And I am told that Herons do the same, and Pelicans also.
I learn further that Storks migrate along with Cranes and all together avoid the winter. But when the season of frost is over and both Storks and Cranes return to their own homes, each kind recognises its own nests, as men do their own houses.
Alexander of Myndus asserts that when they reach old age they pass to the islands of Ocean and are transformed into human shape, and that this is a reward for their filial piety towards their parents, since, if I am not mistaken, the gods especially desire to hold up there if nowhere else a human model of piety and uprightness, for in no other country under the sun could such a race continue to exist.

Quote

They say that the Stork also is subject to jealousy. At any rate at Crannon in Thessaly a man who had married a beautiful wife of the name of Alcinoe left her at home and went away on his travels. So Alcinoe had intercourse with one of the servants. The Stork that was about the house got to know of this and would not tolerate it, but avenged its master. At any rate it sprang upon the woman and blinded her eyes.

Those I just found interesting, but this story may have some relevance.

Quote

There was a woman in Tarentum, admirable in other ways and particularly as a faithful wife. Her name was Heracleis.
So long as her husband lived she cared for him with the utmost devotion. But when he died the woman took a dislike to life in the city and to the home in which she had seen her husband dead, and such was her grief that she went to dwell among the tombs and was content to remain by her late husband's sepulchre, constant to him who was beneath the soil. And once in summer when some storks, still fledglings, were essaying their first flight, one of them, the youngest, not having sufficient strength of wing, fell and broke one of its legs. So Heracleis seeing its fall and finding how its leg was injured, took pity on the nestling and picking it up very gently wrapped up the wound, and tended it with fomentations and plasters, brought it food, gave it drink, and, when in due course it was strong and had grown its quill-feathers, set it free. And the stork, knowing by some strange instinct that it owed her the price of its life, departed. Later when a year had passed and spring was just beginning to brighten, the woman chanced to be warming herself in the sun, and the Stork which had been healed by her, seeing its benefactress, checked the speed of its wings and sinking nearer to earth came close, opened its bill, and disgorged a stone into the lap of Heracleis, and then flew off and settled on the roof. At first, naturally enough, she was amazed and startled out of her wits, and was at a loss to conjecture what this action could mean. And so she put the stone away somewhere indoors; later being woken in the night she saw that it diffused a brightness and a gleam, and the house was lit up as though a torch had been brought in, so strong a radiance came from, and was engendered by, the lump of stone. And when she had taken hold of the Stork and handled it she recognised the scar left by the wound, and knew that it was the very bird which had been the object of her pity and her ministrations.

Based on the fact the woman is seated on the chair, could she be old at this point? Perhaps she's not feeding the stork, but instead it's giving her something? Maybe it's some artifact that was important to the city? Or maybe it was as the story mentions, a stone, and in typical ancient Greek fashion this stone was kept in a temple for others to see.

We can't really test this theory at all, since from my understand we aren't entirely sure where exactly the city was, and thus we have no ruins to excavate. Pausanias never wrote about it and Strabo only briefly. But, for now it's the closest I can come up with.

 

[Restitutor]

While I know this wasn't the main point of this post, I just had to chime in and say those excerpts from Aelian are incredible. I had never heard of him before, and now I want to devour every single thing he's written. The way he writes, I feel as if I had actually experienced what he was describing; cannot believe these words are 1800 years old.

Here's a local heron I see every now and again, although I have not tried feeding it while reclining on a chair 😆:

[kirispupis]

5 hours ago, Restitutor said:

While I know this wasn't the main point of this post, I just had to chime in and say those excerpts from Aelian are incredible. I had never heard of him before, and now I want to devour every single thing he's written. The way he writes, I feel as if I had actually experienced what he was describing; cannot believe these words are 1800 years old.

 

I agree! I first learned about him from reading Birds in the Ancient World by Jeremy Mynott, who quotes him often. As far as I can tell, there's only one English translation - by Scholfield. It's available online, but I prefer reading in book format so I ordered the Loeb volumes from Harvard University Press and they'll go on my reading list. 

While I believe the coin depicts a stork, here are some photos of mine of similar birds (all completely wild).

Heron

 

Egret

 

Crane

 

Stork

[Sulla80]

Great research and an interesting thought on the story of the reverse of this coin @kirispupis I will add Aristophanes:

PISTHETAIROS, a middle-aged Athenian:

But there’s an ancient law among the birds—
inscribed in stone on tablets of the storks,
“When father stork has raised up all his young,
when they are set to fly out of the nest,
then young storks must, in their turn, care for him.”

-Aristophanes, Birds, 1685-1690

 

There are also a couple of stories of Hera turning people into storks - maybe your coin depicts Hera?

Hera grew jealous of a beautiful queen named Gerana and turned her into a stork see Ovid Metamorphoses 6.89-91

Hera angered by Antigone of Troy's claim that her hair was more beautiful than that of the the goddess, turned Antigone's hair into snakes. Another god, pitying her, turned her into a stork ( who eats snakes ).

and  a Greek law called Pelargonia, from the Ancient Greek word πελαργός (pelargos) for stork, required citizens to take care of their elderly parents, as storks do, and the Greeks also held that killing a stork could be punished with death.  (see: BBC Radio 4: Seven birds and their mysterious folklore)

Stork on a Roman wine jug circa 1st century BC (image public domain from Andreoni, Maura. (2020). How Stork Legends, Myths and Omens Set Their Place in History, in Ancient Origins, Stella Novus Dublin IRL. )

Here's a favorite from Phalanna: more here https://www.sullacoins.com/post/thessalian-nymph-4th-century-bc

 

[Sulla80]

13 minutes ago, kirispupis said:

I agree! I first learned about him from reading Birds in the Ancient World by Jeremy Mynott, who quotes him often. As far as I can tell, there's only one English translation - by Scholfield. It's available online, but I prefer reading in book format so I ordered the Loeb volumes from Harvard University Press and they'll go on my reading list. 

While I believe the coin depicts a stork, here are some photos of mine of similar birds (all completely wild).

Heron

 

Egret

 

Crane

 

Stork

amazing photos!

[kirispupis]

17 minutes ago, Sulla80 said:

Great research and an interesting thought on the story of the reverse of this coin @kirispupis I will add Aristophanes:

PISTHETAIROS, a middle-aged Athenian:

But there’s an ancient law among the birds—
inscribed in stone on tablets of the storks,
“When father stork has raised up all his young,
when they are set to fly out of the nest,
then young storks must, in their turn, care for him.”

-Aristophanes, Birds, 1685-1690

 

I'm surprised at myself for missing this one! Aristophanes is easily my favorite Greek playwright and the source of my interest in ancient Greece after I read all of his plays as a teenager.

 

18 minutes ago, Sulla80 said:

There are also a couple of stories of Hera turning people into storks - maybe your coin depicts Hera?

Hera grew jealous of a beautiful queen named Gerana and turned her into a stork see Ovid Metamorphoses 6.89-91

 

I left this one out because Hera actually changed her into a crane, not a stork (as I understand). This legend plays into modern legends, though, in that Gerana had just given birth, so the poor crane bundled up her baby and took off. It's believed that story eventually turned into our tale of storks delivering babies. BBC had a story about it.

It's definitely possible that the image is of Hera now that I think of it. She's well depicted on the coinage of Perrhaiboi, which is essentially where Phalanna was, and other Thessalian coins. The major issues IMHO with that scene being depicted here are

• Why would Hera reach out to the crane who she'd just transformed and hated?
• Why would Phalanna have honored this crane on their coin?

One thought I had was that perhaps Phalanna was founded by Gerana's baby. Her husband was Nikodamos, king of the pygmies, and her son was Mopsos (not the seer but another one). If this were true, though, I'd expect to see some bundled baby on the reverse, and even after checking better copies (though mine's pretty good compared to the majority) I don't see it.