Dichalkon

Issued by the sanctuary administration at Olympia rather than any civic authority, this bronze circulated primarily within the festival economy of the Games — a closed commercial environment where pilgrims, vendors, and sacrificial traders needed small-denomination exchange. The Eleans controlled the sanctuary but Olympia itself occasionally struck under its own name, a distinction that mattered politically to the communities of the western Peloponnese.

Production likely concentrated in the intervals between Olympiads, with dies prepared in anticipation of the quadrennial influx.