Thourioi (Lucania) AE 6.08g 19mm, Apollo r. / Horse rearing, 300-250 BC

Thourioi (Lucania), AE bronze, 300–250 BC, 6.08 g, 19 mm. Anepigraphic obverse with bust of Apollo right. Reverse ΘOY; horse rearing right; monogram in exergue. Struck at Thourioi; centered strike on a compact round flan; medium brown surfaces with scattered green deposits, light porosity, and minor edge nicks; ethnic complete and reverse devices clear. SNG ANS 1201; SNG Copenhagen 1517.

Founded in 444/3 BC near the site of Sybaris, Thourioi was a Greek colony in Lucania whose bronze coinage supplied local small change during the turbulent decades of the late 4th–early 3rd century BC, a period marked by conflicts with the Lucanians, the campaigns of Pyrrhus, and Rome’s advance into Magna Graecia. The ethnic ΘΟΥ abbreviates ΘΟΥΡΙΩΝ, identifying the issuing city, while the recurring Apollo head and rearing horse types characterize Thourioi’s later bronze series that circulated widely in southern Italy until Roman control consolidated the region.