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Nomos
| Issuer | Tarentum |
|---|---|
| Year | 302 BC - 280 BC |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | 7.763 g |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Greek |
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| Reverse description | Taras, the eponymous founder-hero of Tarentum depicted as a young child, seated to the left astride a dolphin, holding a bunch of grapes in one hand and a distaff in the other. The city ethnic ΤΑΡΑΣ appears in the field along with the magistrate's initials ΚΛΝ. The dolphin, an emblem closely associated with the city's foundation myth, is rendered with careful naturalistic detail, and the figure of Taras exhibits the soft, rounded modelling typical of high-quality Tarentine die-cutting of the early third century BC. |
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| Additional information |
Tarentum's nomoi from this period were minted under the shadow of near-constant military threat from Lucanian and Messapian neighbors, prompting the city to hire a succession of Greek mercenary commanders — Archidamus of Sparta, Alexander of Epirus, Cleonymus of Sparta — to fight wars it could not win on its own. The coin-issuing authority during this window was prolific precisely because paying foreign troops required hard silver in quantity.
Vlasto 706 falls within a well-documented die sequence. Tarentum's magistrate system means the controlling names on individual dies allow closer dating than the broad bracket suggests.