★ Seriphos, the home of Perseus ★

Cyclades. Seriphos after 200 BC.
Bronze Æ

20 mm., 5,81 g.

Head of Perseus right, wearing winged Phrygian helmet, c/m: thunderbolt / ΣE-PI, Gorgon's head facing, harpa right below.

nearly very fine, countermarked

BMC Crete etc.. pg. 119, 6 var. (arrangement of ethnic; harpa left); cf. SNG Copenhagen 733.

Seriphos is an island in the Aegaean sea, and one of the Cyclades, lying between Cythnos and Siphnos. It is celebrated in mythology as the place where Danaë and Perseus were driven to shore in the chest in which they had been exposed by Acrisius, where Perseus was brought up, and where he afterwards turned the inhabitants into stone with the Gorgon's head. (Strab. x. p.487).