Poseidonia issued coins from the archaic period (beginning with
the usual incuse fabric) to its capture by the Lucanians early
in the 4th century. Its successor Paestum began to coin about
300, and was allowed to keep its mint open even after 89 B.C.,
when all other local mints in Italy were closed, until the time of
Tiberius.
The ancient Sybaris, famous for her luxury, has left archaic coins; she was, however, destroyed by Croton in 510 B.C. The Athenian colony of Thurium eventually arose near the site of the old Sybaris in 443, and immediately began to issue a splendid series of coins. Not only is the face of the coin occupied by the head of Athene, and the great currency, as at Athens, of tetradrachms, but the severe beauty of the style points to the direct influence of the art of central Greece (Pl. I. fig. 4). The head of Athene is covered by a helmet adorned first with a wreath of olive and then a splendid figure of the sea-monster Scylla. The reverse shows a bull butting (θοῦριος), in a strikingly ideal form. Probably the obverse type affords the nearest reflection of the masterpiece of Pheidias, or at least the closest following of his style.
Velia, the last colony of Phocaea, whose citizens sailed away to the far west rather than submit to the Persian tyrant (544 B.C.), shows coins from its foundation. The pieces of fine work witness to an Asiatic origin in the types of the lion, devouring the stag or as a single device, while the obverse displays the head of Athene so much in favour in Magna Graecia. The style, which lacks strength but not beauty, is Italian, and we see no trace of the pictorial qualities of Ionian art. which indeed had not taken its mature form when the exiles left the mother country.
The Bruttii are the first native Italians whom we find striking a fair Greek coinage. Their gold and silver is of late style, the gold presenting the head of Poseidon and Thetis on a sea-horse, the silver the head of Thetis and the figure of Poseidon, both with other subjects. Caulonia has early coins running down to the early fine period, mythologically interesting in type, and the later with a beautifully designed stag on the reverse. For Croton the ruling type is the tripod. The eagle occurs on the obverse and the tripod on the reverse. The bird of Zeus is inferior to that at Agrigentum, as this again is inferior to the eagle of Elis. We note also beautiful types of Heracles seated, one of marvellously delicate work, on the reverse of which Apollo aims an arrow at the Python from behind his tripod—a remarkable composition. The other Heracles types form a most interesting series of recollections, “memory sketches,” of a famous statue, the pose of which recalls the so-called Theseus of the Parthenon, while the obverse presents the head of the Hera Lacinia worshipped on the promontory close by. The latest coins, like the parallel ones of Metapontum, are weak and pretty. The money of the Locri Epizephyrii affords two curious types of reverse, Eirene seated, of fine style, with the legend ΕΙΡΗΝΗ ΛΟΚΡΩΝ, and the later yet more remarkable subject of Roma seated while Pistis crowns her, the legend being ΡΩΜΑ ΠΙΣΤΙΣ ΛΟΚΡΩΝ. There are beautiful coins of the little known town of Pandosia, bearing the head of the nymph Pandosia (?); the reverse has the river Crathis, a splendid head of the Lacinian Hera, and Pan.
Rhegium was closely connected with Messene in Sicily opposite, and thus the great Sicilian currency of tetradrachms prevails. Anaxilaus, tyrant of Rhegium from 494 to 476 B.C., early in his rule acquired Messene through Samian adventurers. The coins of both towns at first present Samian types, and then, the Samians having been expelled, Anaxilaus commemorates his Olympic victory in the mule-car. The same type appears at Messene and last longer. In both cases the reverse bears a running hare, an animal which Anaxilaus introduced into Sicily. The later 5th-century coinage of Rhegium shows a seated figure of the Rhegine Demos, and a fine head of Apollo, by the engraver Hippocrates.
The little-known town of Terina is illustrious as having produced a series of silver didrachms which, on the whole, is the most beautiful in Italy (Pl. I. fig. 5). The obverse has the head of a goddess, who is portrayed winged on the reverse—a wonderfully fine subject, well conceived and most delicately executed in a variety of different attitudes, some recalling the Victories which adorn the balustrade of the temple of Wingless Victory at Athens. Very curiously, the money of Terina begins with an archaic coin which bears on the reverse the named figure of a Wingless Victory, surrounded by the olive-wreath.
The coinage of Sicily is Greek. The Hellenic and Carthaginian colonies of the coast left the barbarous natives undisturbed in the Sicily. inland country, and both issued Greek money, the Punic with a tincture of Phoenician style. The coinage ranges from the 6th century B.C. until the subjugation of the island by the Romans, after which a few cities struck colonial or imperial coins for a short space. The marked periods are those of the preponderance of Syracuse from 480 to 212 B.C., interrupted by the great Carthaginian wars, which were fatal to the cities of the southern coast. The coinage is in gold and electrum, mainly issued at Syracuse, in silver and in bronze. The standard is Attic, except the earliest money of the Chalcidian colonies Himera, Zancle (Messene), and Naxos, which follows the Aeginetan weight. The metrology of Sicily has a distinct relation to that of Italy. Here also there is a double standard, silver and bronze, and in consequence an intrusive silver coin, differing but little from the obol, weighing 0.87 instead of .73 grammes, the silver equivalent of the bronze litra, whose name it borrows. The litra in bronze was the Sicilian pound of 218 grammes, equal to half an Attic mina, and to two-thirds of the Roman libra or pound. So important was the litra in Sicily that the silver litra supplanted the obol, and the didrachm was sometimes called a stater of ten litrae, the decadrachm a piece of fifty litrae, pentecontalitron. The leading coin is the tetradrachm, not, as in Italy, the didrachm.
The Sicilian money is of extremely careful artistic work, not infrequently even in the case of bronze allowing for a more rapid execution of the die; and the highest technical excellence is attained. The art is that of the southern branch of the great Western school, generally more skilful than the art of southern Italy, but less varied. The earlier fine work has a naive beauty peculiar to the West and almost confined to Sicily; all that follows is evidently gem-engravers' work. These coins are remarkable for the frequency of artists' signatures, which for the short period of highest skill are almost universal on the larger silver money of Syracuse, and occur less frequently on that of the other great cities. Among these artists may be mentioned Exacestidas (at Camarina), Eucleidas, Eumenes, Phrygillus (at Syracuse), Euacnetus (Syracuse, Camarina, Catana), Cimon (Messana, Syracuse Pl. I. figs. 7, 8), Heracleidas and Choirion (Catana). As in Italy, the decline is more rapid than elsewhere in the Greek world, in consequence of the inherent weakness of the style; but it is in part due to the calamities of the island, as of lower Italy.
The fame won by the tyranni and other leading aristocrats of Sicily in the great national contests of Hellas, in the race with the quadriga, the mule-car and the horse, led to the introduction and supremacy of types commemorating these victories, probably in most cases those achieved at Olympia. It is obvious that no success could be so appropriately figured on the coinage; the charioteer or the horseman, not the city, was the victor, but at the same time the renown of the city was indissolubly connected with the citizen who won it. Hence these types are almost confined to states ruled by tyranni or oligarchies; outside Sicily they are practically only found at Rhegium when it was closely connected with Sicily, at Cyrene, in the money of Philip II. of Macedon and at Olynthus and in Euboea. The horseman is not a frequent type; the mule-car is limited to Messene (and Rhegium); but the quadriga becomes the stereotyped subject for the reverse of the great Sicilian tetradrachms—the bulk of the coinage—and only escapes heraldic sameness by a charming variety in the details. In the age of finest art a divinity of the city takes, in Homeric guise, the place of the charioteer, or Victory herself so wins the contest; commonly she hovers above, about to crown the charioteer or the horses. Yet more interesting are the types connected with nature-worship, especially those portraying river-gods in the form of a man-headed bull, or a youth with the budding horns of a calf, or in the shape of a dog, and also the subjects of the nymphs of fountains. These types occur on either side of the coin. On nearly all, one side (in early times the reverse, later the obverse) is held by the head of a divinity, Persephone and Athene taking the first place.
The leading position which Syracuse held in the island makes it proper to notice her splendid currency first, the finest for Syracuse. knowledge of the materials, for skill in suitably filling the space, and for delicacy of execution in the whole range of Greek money, though we miss the noble simplicity of Greece, the strong feeling of western Asia Minor, and the simple picturesqueness of Crete. Syracuse, was founded in 734 B.C. by Archias of Corinth, an origin which, remembered on both sides, served her well in later history. In the 6th century, perhaps while still under the oligarchy of the Geomori, she issued her most archaic silver money, which, primitive as
