Chalkon Small letters

Hermione was a small polis on the Argolid coast, perpetually overshadowed by Argos yet stubbornly autonomous in its coinage. The city maintained a sanctuary of Chthonia — a chthonic form of Demeter — that drew enough regional pilgrimage traffic to sustain local bronze production well into the Hellenistic period. The "small letters" variety distinguished here refers to the epigraphic style of the ethnic inscription, a detail that has allowed specialists to sequence the city's bronze issues into at least two distinct emission groups.

BCD Peloponnesos 1295.1 is the benchmark specimen for this subtype.