LEUCAS SILVER STATER – OVERSTRIKE ON A LUCANIAN HERACLEA COIN WITH HERCULES FIGHTING THE NEMEAN LION – XF GREEK ACARNANIA COIN (Inv. 18709)

$975.00

18709. ACARNANIA. LEUCAS. Ca. 4th CENTURY BC.
Silver Stater, 8.46 g, 22 mm.
Obv. Pegasus flying left, Λ below. Rev. ΛΕΥ, helmeted head of Athena left, wreath in right field.
Pegasi 64; HGC 4, 322; BCD Akarnania –.
XF, overstruck on a Heracles strangling lion nomos type of Lucanian Heraclea (cf. HGC 1, 988); traces of undertype visible on obverse above the Pegasus (lion) and below Pegasus’ neck (Heracles’ club).

Overstrikes on Corinthian–type host coins are well known for the cities of Tarentum, Metapontum, and Thurium in the third century BC, but the present stater of Leucas is a rare example of Corinthian types struck over a south Italian host. The original Heracleot coin may have been brought back from southern Italy by a northwestern Greek mercenary who had served in the army of Alexander I of Epirus during his campaigns against the Lucanians in 334–331 BC. Heraclea is specifically named as one of the Greek cities saved by Alexander from Lucanian domination in 332 BC. The Achaean weight standard of the south Italian nomos used at Heraclea was tolerably close to that of the Corinthian standard for the much–appreciated Corinthian stater, thus the coin was overstruck at Leucas to make it more viable as a circulating coin in Greece.