Chalkon

Metapontion's bronze issues of this period reflect a city in managed decline. Once one of the wealthiest Greek colonies in southern Italy — its agricultural surplus so reliable that early tradition credits the city with dedicating a golden grain stalk at Delphi — Metapontion had by the early third century lost significant territory and population pressure to the encroaching Lucanian tribes. Bronze coinage of this type circulated in a shrinking civic economy, filling the small-denomination gap left as large silver issues thinned out. The city would effectively cease to function as an independent polis following the devastation of the Pyrrhic War and, definitively, after the Hannibalic catastrophe of 207 BC.