Arsinoe (
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
: ) was a
Hellenistic era city in
Crete
Crete ( ; , Modern Greek, Modern: , Ancient Greek, Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the List of islands by area, 88th largest island in the world and the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, fifth la ...
known primarily from the coins it minted. Though its location is not entirely certain,
numismatic
Numismatics is the study or collection of currency, including coins, tokens, paper money, medals, and related objects.
Specialists, known as numismatists, are often characterized as students or collectors of coins, but the discipline also inclu ...
evidence suggests that it was a
Ptolemaic refounding of the city of
Rhithymna. This evidence includes stylistic parallels between coins minted by each city as well as the find spots for the Arsinoe coins clustering around Rhithymna. If this identification is accurate, the city would have reverted to its original name at an unknown later point.
The city is sometimes further equated with another Cretan city called Arsinoe mentioned in the writings of
Stephanus of Byzantium
Stephanus or Stephen of Byzantium (; , ''Stéphanos Byzántios''; centuryAD) was a Byzantine grammarian and the author of an important geographical dictionary entitled ''Ethnica'' (). Only meagre fragments of the dictionary survive, but the epit ...
. However, Stephanus appears to refer to this city as a dependent of
Lyktos which has been taken as evidence of a location further east. Scholars have doubted both the intended reading of this passage as well as Stephanus's reliability as a source.
References
Populated places in ancient Crete
Port settlements in ancient Crete
Hellenistic Crete
Former populated places in Greece
Ptolemaic colonies
{{AncientCrete-geo-stub