Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 1): Zeus god of the bright sky (Cambridge, 1914)

254 The Solar Wheel in Greece

could be quoted; and that occurs in the same poet's previous
description of Ixion1. But Ixion's four-spoked wheel, as I have
already pointed out2, probably represented the sun. It may, there-
fore, fairly be surmised that the four-spoked zynx-wheel also was a
mimic sun. We have in fact definite evidence that on the shores
of the Euxine Sea the sun was conceived as a four-spoked wheel.
Coins of Mesembria in Thrace c. 450-350 B.C. have the name of the
town (MET'A or ME^y^) inscribed between the four spokes of a
wheel, which is surrounded by rays diverging from its rim (fig. 181)3.
This, as Dr B. V. Head observes, is the radiate wheel of the midday

Fig. 181. Fig. 182. Fig. 183.

Fig. 184. Fig. 185.

{mesembria) sun4. Again, coins of Kalchedon in Bithynia c. 480-
400 B.C. show a four-spoked radiate wheel (fig: 182)5, which on
other specimens c. 400 loses its rays (fig. 183)6: this example is

1 Cp. Find. Pyth. 4. 214 ttoiki\o.v ivyya reTpd\Kvap:op (462 B.C.) with Pyth. 2. 40
top 5e T€Tpd\Kvafj.ov ^wpa^e deafxov (475? B.C.). B. L. Gildersleeve's remark—-'It was
poetic justice to bind Ixion to his own iynx wheel'—is ingenious, but misleading.

2 Supra p. 205 fiT.

3 Brit. Mus. Cat. Coins Thrace etc. p. 132, Hunter Cat. Coins i. 421 pi. 28, 8.
I figure a specimen in my collection.

4 Head Hist, num.2 p. 278, following P. Gardner in the Num. Chron. New Series
1880.

5 Brit. Mus. Cat. Coins Pontus etc. p. 124 pi. 27, 1 (my fig. 182), 2, Waddington—
Babelon—Reinach Monn.gr. d''As. Min. i. 290 pi. 45, 9—13, Babelon Monn. gr. rom.
ii. 2. 1493 ff. pi. 18r, 7—9, 10?, 11, Anson Num. Gr. vi. pi. 20, iiT4.f., Head Hist.
num.2 p. 51 t.

s Brit. Mus. Cat. Coins Pontus etc. p. 124 pi. 27, 3 (my fig. 183), Waddington—
Babelon—Reinach Monn. gr. d'As. Min. i. 290 f. pi. 45, 14, 15 ?, Babelon Monn.gr. rom.
ii. 2. 1495^ pi- 181, 12, 13?, Anson Num. Gr. vi. pi. 20, 1116, Head Hist, num.2
p. 511.