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THE PILOT METAPHOR AND ITS ARTISTIC REFLECTIONS (A NOTE ON THE PLATONIC MOTIVE ON SOME CELTIC COINS) // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2014. Issue 1 (1). P. 23-30

On the obverse of a rare gold quarter stater, struck c. 250–225 BCE in northern France and recently found near Ringwould, Kent, one sees the head of Apollo with a lyre and a bow (?) hidden in his curly hair, which proves that it was designed by a local master on the basis of a gold stater of Philipp II of Macedon (382–336 BCE). On the reverse of this small (13 mm) coin we see a strange long-haired Celtic deity: driving his sky-chariot, this god holds a huge hammer in his right hand. A big bee is depicted before the horse’s snout. This reminds of Sucellos, the Celtic god of agriculture, underworld and alcoholic drink, the “good striker,” usually depicted with a hammer in one hand and a cup in another, or, perhaps, the Roman Silvanus. It appears that this image became a prototype for another and quite extraordinary Celtic coin, struck in Normandy, France, c. 100 BCE, which displays a model ship as the victor’s prize in a chariot race. The head of Apollo (now crowned with a wreath) is again found on the obverse, but on the reverse a typologically similar divine charioteer holds – instead of a hammer – a model of a ship. A working hypothesis therefor could be that the image of a bee, also a conductor to the underworld, is simply replaced by the artist with an image of a ship, as if the divine traveler drives his chariot under sky at days and sails away and sinks below the horizon at nights. The image can further be placed both in mythological and historical context. There is quite reasonable to suppose, with D. Ellmers, that this special coin was issued as a gesture of propaganda, designed to show the coastal inhabitants that they are protected at sea and land, and to merchants that the passage through the Channel is safe. Parallel interpretations of the metaphors of pilot, helmsman, the observational tower and harmony, current in the Platonic tradition (Plato, Numenius, Olympiodorus, etc.), could to my mind also help to understand this unusual image. It is fascinating to observe how an unknown artist independently follows the steps of the Greek philosopher in his reinterpreting of a complicated mythological image in a political sense.

Keywords: Platonism, the heavenly traveler, body and soul, a passage to the underworld, the charioteer, pilot, kybernētēs metaphors, Sucellus, harmony, the Celtic ships