Maroneia, wine and horses: The two prides of one city

It has been a while since we last featured a specimen from Maroneia as our Coin of the Month and the horse-and-vine coinage of the city seems appropriate for August, it being both the last month of summer and the first month of grape harvest. And the grapes of Maroneia (and the wine made out of them especially) are woven into the city’s history ever since its very founding by Chios in the 7th century BC. During the time of Homer, its wine was already known to be the best in Thrace and it even was the one given to Odysseus by Maron, the king-priest of Apollo, and eventually used to make the cyclops Polyphemos drunk. As such, seeing vines and grapes on the coinage of the city should not be at all surprising.