Sale: Triton V, Lot: 79. Estimate $250.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 16 January 2002.  Sold For $275. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

LUCANIA, Copia (Thourioi) . Circa 193-89 BC. Æ Quadrans (2.23 gm). Head of Herakles right, wearing lion's skin headdress; three pellets behind / COPIA right, L. LAID left; cornucopiae; three pellets below. SNG ANS -; BMC Italy pg. 303, 4; SNG Copenhagen -; SNG Morcom -; Laffaille -; Weber -; Garrucci pl. 107, 33. Near EF, choice glossy green patina. Scarce. ($250)

The high artistic standard and detailed workmanship of this issue point to a date in the early part of the second century, perhaps immediately following the refoundation of the city as Copia. The gentle replacement of the Thourian Apollo/Artemis series with new Roman denominations in the reduced form familiar to the local population would have been a sensible political act. Such a programme may also have been employed at Panormos where the Greek style coinage was replaced by reduced republican asses retaining the weight standard of about 8 grams, obols becoming asses. Teresa Caruso's excellent work, "La monetazione di Copia Lucaniae, Studi publicati dal Istituto italiano per la storia antica. Fasc. 35, Nona miscelania grecae romana, Rome 1984, published 110 coins in public collections of Copia from 17 different issues, a remarkably small number of surviving coins from so many issues.