Nomos

Tarentum's nomoi of this period fall within the city's long engagement with Spartan identity politics — the colony, founded by Spartan exiles around 706 BC, maintained the horseman type on its coinage for centuries as a deliberate claim to martial prestige. The 340s BC were particularly fraught: Tarentum had called in the Spartan king Archidamus III to help defend against the Messapians and Lucanians, and he died fighting on Italian soil in 338 BC, reportedly on the same day as the Battle of Chaeronea. Coins of this precise window circulated against that backdrop of mercenary dependency and creeping encirclement.