Chalkon

Metapontion's bronze coinage of this period reflects a city in managed decline. The great wheat-exporting economy that had made the city one of the wealthiest in Magna Graecia was contracting, and the shift toward small bronze issues rather than the prestigious silver staters the mint had long produced signals a local economy increasingly reliant on low-denomination exchange. Pythagoras had lived and taught here three centuries earlier; by the time these bronzes circulated, the city was navigating the violent pressure of Oscan migration and the encroaching ambitions of Pyrrhus of Epirus.