These barbarous imitations of Larissa-type tetradrachms were struck by Dacian communities in Oltenia over a remarkably long production span, with successive generations of die-cutters copying copies — each remove from the Greek original introducing new abstraction. The result is a coinage that began as imitation and ended as something wholly indigenous, with imagery so degenerated from the Thessalian source that the prototype is sometimes unrecognizable without reference material.
Oltenia, the region between the Olt and Danube rivers, sat on active trade routes connecting the Greek colonial ports of the Black Sea littoral with the Carpathian interior. Greek silver circulated here under its own weight.
These barbarous imitations of Larissa-type tetradrachms were struck by Dacian communities in Oltenia over a remarkably long production span, with successive generations of die-cutters copying copies — each remove from the Greek original introducing new abstraction. The result is a coinage that began as imitation and ended as something wholly indigenous, with imagery so degenerated from the Thessalian source that the prototype is sometimes unrecognizable without reference material.
Oltenia, the region between the Olt and Danube rivers, sat on active trade routes connecting the Greek colonial ports of the Black Sea littoral with the Carpathian interior. Greek silver circulated here under its own weight.