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Nomos
| Issuer | Tarentum |
|---|---|
| Year | 430 BC - 425 BC |
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| Orientation | Variable alignment ↺ |
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| Obverse description | Taras, the mythological founder of Tarentum, depicted nude and facing right, riding a dolphin to the right. He extends his right hand forward, holding a small bird (likely a dove), while his left arm is raised behind him. The figure is rendered in the early Classical style with careful attention to musculature and anatomy. The dolphin is depicted naturalistically, its body arching beneath the rider, with fins and tail clearly articulated. The field is plain, with no legend or additional devices. |
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| Reverse script | Ancient Greek |
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| Additional information |
Tarentum's silver nomoi of this period draw directly from the city's Spartan colonial roots — the Tarentines traced their foundation to the Partheniai, an illegitimate class expelled from Sparta around 706 BC, and their coinage retained distinctly Laconian iconographic and metrical traditions long after other western Greek cities had diverged. The coin conforms to the reduced Italic standard rather than the full Attic, a deliberate local choice that aided circulation within the Oscan and Messapian trading networks surrounding the city.
The exceptional collection pedigree here — Vlasto, de Luynes, McClean, Gulbenkian among others — places this piece within a small, well-tracked population that has passed through the hands of the most rigorous early 20th-century Greek numismatic scholarship.