Nomos

Metapontion's wealth in the fourth century BC was agricultural in the most literal sense — the city's coinage was underwritten by grain surpluses from the exceptionally fertile Tarentine Gulf hinterland, and the mint maintained consistent output throughout a period when many neighboring Italiote mints were contracting under Lucanian pressure from the interior. The city would eventually fall to those same Lucanian tribes, making issues from this window among the last struck under fully autonomous civic authority.

The Noe sequence places this piece within a closely die-linked group, and the Lloyd and Jameson concordances suggest a relatively tight production horizon despite the broad conventional dating.