Lucania, Heraclea.
Nomos circa 390-340, AR 7.84 g. Head of Athena r., wearing Attic helmet decorated with Scylla hurling stone; in r. field, Δ - Κ - Φ. Rev. [T 90° To left]ΗΡΑΚΛΗΙΩΝ Heracles standing r., strangling the Nemean lion; between Heracles' legs, owl; to the l., club. In upper l. field, KAΛ. Work 36. Jameson 233 (this obverse die). Gillet 125 (this coin). SNG ANS 64 (this obverse die). Van Keuren 50. Historia Numorum Italy 1377. Rare and in exceptional condition for the issue, undoubtedly among the finest specimens known. A masterfully engraved reverse composition struck on a very broad flan and unusually complete. Wonderful old cabinet and extremely fine Ex Leu 15, 1976, 15 and NGSA 6, 2010, 10 sales. From the C. Gillet collection. Herakleia was founded jointly by the Ionian Greek Thourians and the Dorian Tarentines in c. 443 BC following a conflict over control of the territory of the conquered city of Syris. To seal the peace between Thourioi and Taras, it was agreed to found Herakleia on the Gulf of Tarentum. Although the colony was a joint Ionian and Dorian Greek venture, in practice it seems to have been strongly influenced by Taras and the Dorian element of the population. Taras protected the city from the encroachments of the neighboring Lucanians, an Italic people constantly poised to overrun the Greek cities of Magna Graecia in the fourth century BC, and established it as the administrative capital of an Italiote League in the 360s BC. Primarily under the leadership of Taras, this league bound the cities of Magna Graecia together in a defensive alliance against both the expanding power of Dionysios I of Syracuse and the Lucanians. Unfortunately, by 334 BC, Herakleia had fallen to the Lucanians and was only restored to freedom by the adventuring Molossian king Alexander I two years later. Although he saved Herakleia, Alexander did not restore it to its former status and instead transferred the capital of the Italiote League to Thourioi as a slap in the face to the Tarentines. This beautiful nomos was stuck at Herakleia before the Lucanian conquest, during the period of greatest prosperity for the city. The types visually advertise the origins of the Thourian and Tarentine elements of the city's population. The obverse head of Athena, here shown wearing an Attic helmet decorated with a wonderful figure of Skylla, is taken directly from the contemporary coinage of Thourioi and serves to symbolize the origin of the Thourians as colonists from Athens. The reverse depicts Herakles wrestling the Nemean Lion, an allusion to the Dorian ancestry of the Tarentine settlers of Herakleia as well as to the name of the city. Herakles was widely identified as the ultimate ancestor of the Dorian Greeks and especially the Spartans who provided the original colonists of Taras. The reverse legend is also of some special note for its use of the Greek letter he at the beginning of the ethnic. While this letter occurs in many Greek inscriptions of the Archaic period to indicate the sound of Latin letter H before a vowel, it had fallen out of use in much of mainland Greece and western Asia Minor by the Classical period. However, it lived on as part of the epichoric alphabets of Taras and Herakleia as late as the early second century BC.