Greek Banknotes 5000 Drachma bank note 1945 Bank of Greece
Obverse: Mitrotita - Motherhood.
Reverse: Mythical scene - The goddess Thetis brings to her son (Achilles) in the sea on a sea horse a shield, which was forged by Vulcan for him.
Printer: IETA - Bank of Greece Printing Works.
TPAΠEZA THΣ EΛΛAΔOΣ - BANK OF GREECE
1941-1946 Issue
50 Drachma 50 Drachma 100 Drachma 500 Drachma 1000 Drachma 5000 Drachma 10000 Drachma 10000 Drachma 20000 Drachma
Achilles
In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War and the central character and greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad. His mother was the nymph Thetis, and his father, Peleus, was the king of the Myrmidons.
Achilles’ most notable feat during the Trojan War was the slaying of the Trojan hero Hector outside the gates of Troy. Although the death of Achilles is not presented in the Iliad, other sources concur that he was killed near the end of the Trojan War by Paris, who shot him in the heel with an arrow. Later legends (beginning with a poem by Statius in the 1st century AD) state that Achilles was invulnerable in all of his body except for his heel. Because of his death from a small wound in the heel, the term Achilles' heel has come to mean a person's point of weakness.
Thetis
Thetis, is encountered in Greek mythology mostly as a sea nymph or known as the goddess of water, one of the fifty Nereids, daughters of the ancient sea god Nereus.
When described as a Nereid in Classical myths, Thetis was the daughter of Nereus and Doris, and a granddaughter of Tethys with whom she sometimes shares characteristics. Often she seems to lead the Nereids as they attend to her tasks. Sometimes she also is identified with Metis.
Some sources argue that she was one of the earliest of deities worshipped in Archaic Greece, the oral traditions and records of which are lost. Only one written record, a fragment, exists attesting to her worship and an early Alcman hymn exists that identifies Thetis as the creator of the universe. Worship of Thetis as the goddess is documented to have persisted in some regions by historical writers such as Pausanias.
In the Trojan War cycle of myth, the wedding of Thetis and the Greek hero Peleus is one of the precipitating events in the war, leading also to the birth of their child Achilles.
Hippocampus
The hippocampus or hippocamp, also hippokampoi often called a sea-horse in English, is a mythological creature shared by Phoenician and Greek mythology, though the name by which it is recognised is purely Greek. It was also adopted into Etruscan mythology. It has typically been depicted as a horse in its forepart with a coiling, scaly, fish-like hindquarter.