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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;romismatist, post: 8342404, member: 44106&quot;]Here&#039;s an Ae that I acquired in one of the recent Artemide Aste auctions that I haven&#039;t seen for sale for a while. It&#039;s not in great condition but has the city ethnic on the side where Hercules is sitting on the rocks. Athena is on the obverse, which I always find fascinating as Taras was said to be founded by emigrants from Sparta, not Athens. Still, Athena and her owl continue to be an enduring theme on many coins of Taras, most notably the drachm and diobols.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>All of the copper/bronze coinage was minted from 281 - 209 BC, overlapping the period of the First Punic War. In the fourth century, Taras was somewhat exceptional within Magna Grecia that it issued a tremendous variety of fractional denominations solely in silver when other city-states in Magna Grecia and Sicily had already replaced their smaller silver fractions with bronze coinage.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1479450[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>I have a number of other coins from Taras (it is one of my collecting areas) but have not taken photos of any of those coins recently. I also haven&#039;t acquired many coins of Taras recently due to the ongoing sky-high prices. When building out my collection, I&#039;ve opted for acquiring examples of the different denominations rather than building out a collection of didrachms, of which there appear to be a million different varieties. These didrachms are some of the most beautiful but also plentiful examples of Greek and Magna Grecian coinage available.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Note also that a new book on Tarentine diobols was recently released (I assisted in the translation of the book from Italian to English). It&#039;s a hardcover book with 235 pages. It has something like 2000 colour illustrations of diobols from various museums, private collections and auctions, catalogued into 283 different types. You can buy the book (it&#039;s EUR 70 but well worth it!) from Edizione d&#039;Andrea&#039;s website: <a href="https://www.edizionidandrea.com/product-page/the-diobols-of-tarentum" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.edizionidandrea.com/product-page/the-diobols-of-tarentum" rel="nofollow">https://www.edizionidandrea.com/product-page/the-diobols-of-tarentum</a>. </p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1479452[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>Following this, there will be an extensive 3-volume hardcover series devoted to all the coins of Tarentum. Volume 1 will hopefully be completed and available around July/September.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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