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Didrachm
| Issuer | Velia |
|---|---|
| Year | 400 BC - 340 BC |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Phocaean/Campanian Drachm |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Diameter | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Bare head of a nymph facing right, rendered in fine archaic-to-early-classical style with sensitively modelled features. The hair is elaborately dressed in a krobylos — gathered into a large spherical bun at the nape, bound with a ribbon — with loose wavy locks falling alongside the face. A bead necklace is visible at the truncation of the neck. The portrait occupies most of the flan, with no legend or inscription in the field. |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Log in to see details |
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | A powerful lion strides or lunges to the right above a ground line, depicted in high relief with a richly detailed mane and musculature in the characteristic Velian style. An owl flies to the left in the upper field, its wings spread and head turned forward, serving as the city's emblematic badge. Below the ground line, the ethnic legend ΥEΛHTEΩN is inscribed in archaic Greek characters, identifying the issuing community of Hyele (Velia). |
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| Additional information |
Velia — the Greek colonial city known to its founders as Hyele, later Elea — was the philosophical home of Parmenides and Zeno, but its coinage tells a different story about the city's priorities. These didrachms were struck during a period of acute military pressure from the Lucanian tribes pushing down through southern Italy, and the mint's output reflects that urgency: production was substantial, dies were worked hard, and the series shows considerable die-link complexity across the Williams sequence.
The specific dies catalogued by Williams at 216–217 fall within the earliest phase of what numismatists call the "archaic-to-classical transition" in Velian coinage — a moment when the city's engravers were clearly aware of Syracusan developments without simply copying them.