Drachm

Velia — the Greek colony of Hyele, later Elea — was founded around 540 BC by Phocaean refugees fleeing the Persian conquest of their home city. The philosophical school established there by Parmenides and Zeno gives the city an intellectual prominence wildly disproportionate to its political weight. These drachms fall squarely within the period of Parmenides' own lifetime, a detail that lends the series an unusual biographical proximity to ancient thought.

Williams' exhaustive die study remains the definitive reference, cataloguing the series across dozens of obverse dies with enough granularity to permit precise placement of individual specimens within the emission sequence.