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Message:: [QUOTE="Jay GT4, post: 8207186, member: 88526"]Nice coins everyone.  I have several of these but here's just one... [ATTACH=full]1438890[/ATTACH] Calabria, Taras DidrachmNaked youth galloping right on horseback left, crowning horse with right hand, monogram ΣY in field behind youth and ΛΥK INOΣ below horse Taras seated on dolphin left, holding chalmys and thrusting trident in right hand, owl behind TAPAS in Exergue Calabria 272-235 BC 6.62g Vlasto 836 Tarentum, the only Spartan colony ever to be established, was founded in 706 BC by the Partheniae - Spartan children born to unmarried women as a product of Spartan desperation to ensure the survival and continuation of their demographic during the bloody Messenian wars, who were later disowned and expelled by the state - and Perioeci (subjects, but not citizens of Sparta), under the leadership of the Parthenian Phalanthos. According to legend, Phalanthos consulted the oracle at Delphi, and was told that he should found his new city 'where rain fell from a clear sky'. After much searching, and despairing of finding a suitable location for a city, Phalanthos was consoled by his wife Aethra who laid his head in her lap, and as her tears splashed upon his forehead he understood the oracle's words for his wife's name itself meant 'clear sky', and thus he determined to make the nearby harbour the site of their new home, which they named after Taras, the son of Poseidon and the nymph Satyrion.[/QUOTE]