Background on Greek coins.pdf - RebelText

een adapted from repousé work. The incuse coinages did not last long; they
were abandoned after about a century.
Metapontum. Circa 510-470 BC. AR Nomos (8.11 g, 12h). (Rev.) META on right, sixgrained
barley ear / Incuse eight-grained ear. Noe 193 (same dies); HN Italy 1482.
Messana Tetradrachm (c. 420-413 BC)
We have it on the authority of Aristotle that the mule-team and hare on
this tetradrachm of Messana commemorate the Olympic victory by Anaxilas,
tyrant of Messana and, across the Strait of Messina in what is now Italy,
Rhegium, in 484 or 480 BC:
“Sicily was without hares until the time of Anaxilas of Rhegium,
but he imported and preserved them, and, as about the same time
he won a victory at Olympia with his mule-car, he placed on the
Rhegine coins the types of a mule-car and a hare.” 2
The reverse type of the leaping hare is unique to Messana and Rhegium.
Jenkins (p. 91) attributes it to being the animal of Pan, who appears underneath
the hare on some specimens. This one, however, has a rarer type of the hare and
fly. Aristotle reports that Anaxilas introduced hares into Sicily. Kray (214)
suggests that the hare may refer to a cult, associated with Pan, brought to
Messana under Anaxilas. Whatever its origin, it seems that Messanians
associated the hare with the worship of their god Pan, as it continued to be
struck long after the tyrant’s death. In 369 BC Carthage destroyed Messana,
putting an end to its coinage.
2 Pollux, Onom. V, 75.
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