Spot the Completionist. A Coin of Medma.

Bruttium, Medma. AR Stater, ca. 330-320 B.C. Obv: Pegasos flying left; Rev: Helmeted head of Athena left.

When I started out collecting the Greek coins of Southern Italy I created a list of all of the cities that should feature in such a collection. Over the years I have acquired coins from Sybaris, Croton, Metapontum, Taras, Kaulonia etc. but there have been a few cities which rarely come to the market and so remains gaps in my collection. One such city is Medma.

Medma was a colony founded, together with Hipponium, by the Epizephyrian Locrians in the 7th or 6th century BC and is said to have derived its name from an adjoining fountain. It had a port but seems never to have developed into an important city, possibly due to its having fallen foul of Dionysius of Syracuse. "Dionysius settled in Messene a thousand Lokrians, four thousand Medmaeans, and six hundred Messenians from the Peloponnesus" [Diodorus Siculus, Library 8-40, 14.78.5]. However, Medma seems to have survived the fall of many other more important cities of Magna Graecia and it is recorded still existing later by Strabo and Pliny the Elder, disappearing from the records after the Punic wars.

According to Hoover, the only silver coinage attributed to the city consists of staters struck on the Corinthian standard (8.6g tridrachm stater) in the late fourth century BC, which used the normal Corinthian types of Athena and Pegasus. The city is only identified by a monogram or initial on the staters (ME or MK). There is no evidence of a monogram on this coin, however it is consistent with other examples on acsearch.info, where the coins either have a 'spider-like' monogram or no ethnic. Robinson (SNG Lloyd 695) identified an issue on stylistic grounds which lacks the monogram, so my assumption is that this coin may be attributed to that issue. I obtained this coin from an auction (Stack's Bowers) and, while I am sure I overpaid a bit, the satisfaction of having one fewer gap in my collection of Southern Italian cities certainly compensates. Now for Pixous!