Metapontum was an Achaean foundation on the instep of Italy, planted on a fertile coastal plain between the Bradano and Basento rivers, and its prosperity rested on grain. The ear of barley had been the city's emblem since its earliest incuse staters in the sixth century BC, and it remained the constant reverse type for some three centuries. Strabo (6.1.15) records the golden harvest the Metapontines dedicated at Delphi, a sign of how closely the city identified itself with its crops. Demeter, goddess of grain, was the natural choice for the obverse, and here she appears crowned with a wreath of grain-ears and adorned with a triple pendant earring and a pearl necklace, which give her the refined elegance of the Hellenistic Greek West.

This nomos was struck in a turbulent period. Metapontum was pulled into the contests over southern Italy among Tarentum, Syracuse, Sparta's Cleonymus, who seized the city c. 303 BC (Diodorus 20.104), and soon afterward Pyrrhus of Epirus and Rome. The coinage of these decades kept the old types but grew increasingly elaborate in its secondary details. Here the barley ear is accompanied by a cornucopia with two grain-ears, an emphatic statement of abundance, and by the letters [Δ]I and [ΦI], presumably the initials of the magistrates

Pedigree: Kricheldorf ( Stuttgart ) Auktion 32, 14-15 November 1977, lot 341