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Archaios Numismatics Description: Greek Silver Diobol coin from Thourioi in Lucania, Italy, Circa 400 BC Obverse: Helmeted Head of Athena Right, wearing crested Attic helmet decorated with Skylla. Reverse: Bull butting Right, Tunny / Sturgeon swimming right in exergue. Ethnic ΘΟΥΡ[ΙΩΝ] above.
Mint: Thourioi, Lucania Itaiy Size: 11 mm Weight: 1.07 g InventoryID: 51.24 Ref: SNG Cop 1470 Condition: aVF. Porosity. Nice example of this type. As always, Please use the Pictures as your judge as grading is subjective. Notes: Thourioi (Thurium) is important ancient colony of Lucania, Italy and was founded, circa B.C. 443, at a spot not far removed from the site of the deserted Sybaris, where there was a fountain named Thuria. Its rapid rise was doubtless in part due to the same local advantages which must have contributed so largely to the commercial prosperity of the ancient Sybaris, and in part also, perhaps, to a large influx of new colonists from Athens. The head of Athena on these coins is probably that of Athena Skyletria, a sea-goddess whose worship appears to have prevailed at the town of Skylletion (of which, however, we have no coins) as well as on the rocky Iapygian promontory, at Heraclea, and perhaps at other dangerous points on the Bruttian coasts. With regard to the meaning of the bull on the reverse of the coins of Thurium there has been much difference of opinion. Some take it to be a symbol of Dionysos, others to be the Βους θουριος or rushing bull indicative of the fountain Θουρια from which the city took its name, while others again, and perhaps with better reason, look upon it as symbolizing the river Krathis, and as merely an artistic outcome or development of the bull which was the constant type of the archaic coins of Sybaris. Lucania was a region of Southen Italy. It was the land of the Lucani (Lucanians), an Oscan people of Samnite race who migrated southwards about B.C. 400. It extended from the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Gulf of Taranto. The coinage of the district consists of —
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