Vintage hotsell Oedipus Sphinx Pendant

Pendant The Sphinx of Oedipus made with an ACE of Castulus with a virile head on the obverse and on the reverse The Sphinx to which Oedipus hit the enigma.

Description

Silver pendant handmade in fence of Ag.925mls. with AS IBÉRICO de Cástulo (Linares, Jaén) with virile head on the obverse and Sphinx with pointed cap and Iberian letters (unrecognizable) on the reverse.

Currency: AS.
Material: BRONZE.
Mint: Cástulo. Linares. (Jaén)
Weight:
Time: II -I century BC. C.
Obverse: Imberbe virile head with headband and hand in front.
Reverse: Sphinx with a pointed cap and Iberian letters (unrecognizable).
Description : As ibérico de Cástulo (Castele) with virile head on the obverse and Sphinx with pointed cap on the reverse

The Sphinx. Σφίγξ

It is a female monster with a woman's face and bust, a lion's chest, legs and tail, and wings like a bird of prey. Hesiod says in his Theogony that she is the daughter of Echidna, a monster with a woman's body and a snake's tail instead of legs and Ortrus, the dog with several heads of Geriones, brother of Cerberus, although there are other versions that make her the daughter of the monster Typhon, son of Gaia and Tartarus.
The Sphinx is famous for the relationship with the legend of Oedipus and the Theban cycle, it seems that the monster was sent to Thebes by order of Hera to punish the city for the sin of its king Laius having loved the young Chrysippus, son of Pelops and the nymph Axioque when he was banished by Zeto and Amphion, thus betraying the hospitality of Pelops who welcomed him amicably into his court. Laius falls in love with his son Chrysippus and abducting him seduces him, the young hotsell man out of shame commits suicide, Pelops before this crime that goes unpunished, curses him solemnly giving rise to the curse of the Labdacids that reaches Oedipus and his children.
The Sphinx settles on a mountain west of Thebes and from there ravages the fields, kills the cattle and devours the people it encounters in its path. He posed riddles to the Thebans that they could not solve and then killed them. The Sphinx sang her riddles, Sophocles calls her <>, had learned riddles from the Muses, the most famous was: What to be provided with voice is four legs of two and three?, many had tried to solve the riddle among them Hemon, the son of Creon, king of Thebes but all had died, before this King Creon promises the kingdom of Thebes and the hand of his sister Yocasta to whoever solves the riddle and kill the Sphinx, this according to Aristophanes the Grammarian was Oedipus' answer:
"Listen, even when you don't want to, Muse of bad omen of the dead, my voice, which is the end of your madness. You have referred to the man, who when he crawls on the ground, at first, is born from the mother's womb as a helpless quadruped and, being old, supports his cane like a third foot, carrying the neck bent by old age."

Faced with the correctness of the answer, the bereaved monster throws himself from a rock and dies, Oedipus is later proclaimed king of Thebes.

The mint of Cástulo, currently 5 km from Linares (Jaén) had as one of its main characteristics in the large pieces the image of The Sphinx it seems that by oriental influences (Phoenicians and Carthaginians). Cástulo was an important Iberian enclave, capital of the Oretania and one of the largest oppidum of the peninsula. Its emergence in history is during the Second Punic War as an ally of Carthage where it seems that the mint begins to work to pay the expenses of the war against Rome.

After the Carthaginian defeat in the Second Punic War, Castulus made a pact with Rome remaining as a Confederate city maintaining the right to mint currency. Rome respects the values, the writing and the typology of the coins something that was common in Hispania in the important mints.