Stater

Baletium was a small Messapian settlement in the heel of Italy — modern Puglia — whose coinage output was extremely limited, placing this stater among the rarer issues of the Messapian monetary tradition. The Messapians, an Illyrian-descended people linguistically distinct from their Italic and Greek neighbors, began striking coin only under the influence of nearby Tarentum, whose own silver coinage dominated the region's commerce throughout the fifth century.

The de Luynes reference traces to the celebrated collection of Honoré Théodoric d'Albert, duc de Luynes, donated to the Bibliothèque nationale in 1862 — its appearance there suggests this type was known from a very small number of specimens even by the nineteenth century.