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Didrachm
| Issuer | Cumae (Kuma), Campania |
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| Year | 420 BC - 385 BC |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Technique | Hammered |
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| Obverse description | Facing lion's scalp rendered in archaic style, depicted frontally with the mane articulated by stippled pellets arranged across the crown of the head. Flanking the central lion's scalp on either side is a boar's head shown in profile, each facing inward toward the principal device, creating a symmetrical, heraldic tripartite composition. The three animal heads together form an apotropaic device filling the flan boldly, characteristic of early South Italian Greek coinage of the late fifth century BC. |
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| Reverse description | A mussel shell depicted in profile at center field, its paired valves rendered with carefully incised detail conveying naturalistic observation. A single barley corn appears in the field above the shell, functioning as an agricultural symbol of the colony's prosperity. The ethnic legend KVMAION in archaic Greek characters is distributed around the periphery of the reverse field, referencing the Campanian Greek colony of Cumae. |
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| Additional information |
Cumae holds the distinction of being the oldest Greek colony in the western Mediterranean, founded by settlers from Chalcis and Eretria around 740 BC. By the late fifth century, when this didrachm was struck, the city had already survived a Samnite takeover in 421 BC — after which the Oscan-speaking population gradually displaced the Greek civic culture that had produced the earlier coinage. This piece sits near that cultural fault line, issued in the decades immediately following the transition.
The mint's output dried up sharply by the 380s, making later specimens from this series substantially harder to locate than the preceding fifth-century issues.