Sale: CNG 72, Lot: 83. Estimate $400.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 14 June 2006.  Sold For $565. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

LUCANIA, Metapontion. Circa 540-510 BC. AR Nomos (7.97 g, 12h). MET on left, eight-grained ear / Incuse seven-grained ear. Noe 46 (same dies); HN Italy 1463. Near VF, scratches on obverse, minor die breaks.

Metapontion, originally named Sybaris, was an Achaian colony of very early foundation, though the precise details of its origin are shrouded in uncertainty. Following the destruction of its first foundation by the Samnites, it was refounded, as Metapontion, early in the 7th century BC by settlers under the leadership of Leukippos, who was thereafter revered as the city founder. The great prosperity of the city — attested by the extent of its archaic silver coinage commencing in the mid 6th century BC — was based on agriculture. Situated on the Gulf of Tarentum, Metapontion occupied a plain of extraordinary fertility watered by the rivers Bradanos and Kasuentos. Its standard coin type is an ear of barley, a tribute to the source of Metapontine wealth, and Demeter, the goddess of grain who is the city’s most revered diety. One of the city's most notable claims was that it was the burial-place of Pythagoras who had retired there and perished in a sedition.