Cassandrea in Macedonia, Philip I., 244-249 AD., As, Gaebler 18.

Cassandrea in Macedonia, Philip I., 244-249 AD.,
Æ Dupondius(?) (21-22 mm / 6,54 g),
Obv.: IMP C M IVL PHIL[IPPS] , radiate head of Philip right.
Rev.: COLΩN CA CA-SS-[ANDR(IAS?)] , the nymph Nysa, wearing kalathos, chlamys and chiton, standing left, looking right to the Dionysos child on her left arm, holding in left hand cornucopiae, little Dionysos extending its hand towards bunch of grapes, that Nysa is holding up in her right hand; the cornucopia is containing a long fruit between two poppies.
Gaebler, AMNG III, p. 55, no. 18 (rev.: plate XIII, 13) (1 specimen, Wien) ; Mionnet Suppl. 3, 58, 379 ; Imhoof-Blumer monn. gr. 68, 35 ; cf. Moushmov 6337 .
rare

Cassandreia was founded 316-315 BC. by Cassander on the site of the Potidaea on the Greek Chalkidike peninsula.
Cassandreia / Cassandra (Greek: Κασσάνδρα Kassandra, modern transliteration: Kassandra) was one of the most important cities in Ancient Macedonia founded by and named after Cassander in 316 BC located near the site of the earlier Ancient Greek city of Potidaea. Potidaea had been destroyed by Philip II. (of Macedonia). The territory comprised the areas of Olynthus and Mekyberna to the northeast, Bottiaea to the northwest and the small Isthmus of Pallene (now Kassandra) to the east. At the end of the Roman Republic, a Roman colony was settled around 43 BC by the order of Brutus, by the proconsul Q. Hortensius Hortatus. The official colonial name was Colonia Iulia Augusta Cassandrensis. The colony enjoyed ius Italicum. It is mentioned in Pliny the Elder's encyclopaedia (IV, 36) and in its inscriptions.

The modern settlement of Kassandra (Kassandreia) is south of the ancient site south of the present-day canal. The ancient site of Cassandreia is not excavated. The peninsula of Kassandra lies to the south. This was the westermost of the three peninsulas of Chalkidike, the middle one being the Sithone/Torone peninsula and the eastermost Mount Athos. Its southernmost point is near Paliouri which is also the prefecture's southernmost point, the promontories includes the Kassandreia to the west and the Kanistro to the east. Except for Kanastraio, none of these capes marks the extremities of the peninsula except for the eastern part.
The canal on the norther side of Nea Potidaia to the north divides the peninsula from the rest of Chalkidiki.The peninsula of Kassandra features picturesque villages, beautiful green nature filled with grasslands and forests, beaches and tourist attractions.

No coins of Cassandreia are known until after the time of Augustus, when the city received a Roman colony, and struck bronze coins with Latin legends between the reigns of Claudius and Philippus.


Compared to the history of the site and coins of the ancient city of Cassandreia the story of infant god Dionysos and nymph Nysa is rather complicated:

According to the common tradition, Dionysos was the son of Zeus and Semele, the daughter of Cadmus of Thebes; whereas others describe him as a son of Zeus by Demeter, Io, Dione, or Arge. Diodorus further mentions a tradition, according to which he was a son of Ammon and Amaltheia and that Ammon, from fear of Rhea, carried the child to a cave in the neighbourhood of mount Nysa, in a lonely island formed by the river Triton. Ammon there entrusted the child to Nysa, the daughter of Aristaeus, and Athena likewise undertook to protect the boy.
After the birth of Dionysus, Zeus entrusted him to Hermes, or, according to others, to Persephone or Rhea, who took the child to Ino and Athamas at Orchomenos, and persuaded them to bring him up as a girl. Hera was now urged on by her jealousy to throw Ino and Athamas into a state of madness, and Zeus, in order to save his child, changed him into a ram, and carried him to the nymphs of mount Nysa, who brought him up in a cave, and were afterwards rewarded for it by Zeus, by being placed as Hyades among the stars.
The traditions about the education of Dionysos, as well as about the personages who undertook it, differ as much as those about his parentage and birthplace. Besides the nymphs of mount Nysa in Thrace, the muses, Lydae, Bassarae, Macetae, Mimallones, the nymph Nysa and the nymphs Philia, Coronis, and Cleis, in Naxos, whither the child Dionysus was said to have been carried by Zeus, are named as the beings to whom the care of his infancy was entrusted.
On mount Nysa, Bromie and Bacche too are called his nurses.
Mount Nysa, from which the god was believed to have derived his name, was not only in Thrace and Libya, but mountains of the same name are found in different parts of the ancient world where he was worshipped, and where he was believed to have introduced the cultivation of the vine. Hermes, however, is mixed up with most of the stories about the infancy of Dionysos, and he was often represented in works of art, in connexion with the infant god.

with the help of Gaebler, wikipedia and h**p://bulfinch.englishatheist.org