Excerpt from Coins of Magna Graecia: The Coinage of the Greek Colonies of Southern Italy The works hitherto published on Creek Coins have been written by experts, and therefore it may seem fitting that some apology should be offered by one who, not being of that number, yet ventures to publish a work on this subject. The author offers this volume in the hope of supplying those who have but few books and little knowledge of the Classics with sonic help in the study of the Hellenic art and thought connected with coin-types. The coins issued from the Greek cities of Southern Italy may be used as a means of introducing some readers to a new world full of life, beauty, and suggestive thought, - the realm of Greek imagination. A coin may mean more, and suggest more to us, than can be expressed in a simple description of its types, its date, or its weight, and those who try to see more than is given by the description in a catalogue will look kindly on this attempt to aid them. It is too often forgotten that when these coins were being modelled, more than two thousand years ago, the artists were still making use of forms and ideas belonging to the childhood of the race. When an ancient Greek spoke of a mountain torrent as a rushing bull, and drew the bull to express the idea in his mind, he was no more confused intellectually than the child who cries out in his play "I'm a wolf" or "I'm a bear." It is necessary to the understanding of our children and of the childhood of the race that we should be not unmindful of our own childhood. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

More than three decades have passed since David Sear published 'Greek Coins & Their Values', his revision of Gilbert Askew's "A Catalogue of Greek Coins" published in 1951. Since then, the field of ancient numismatics and the hobby of collecting ancient coins have changed so much that now "Greek Coins & Their Values" would require a complete revision to include all of the most current numismatic information available, list the many new types and varieties unknown to Sear, and determine an approximate sense of rarity for all of these issues. In order to encompass this new material and create a viable reference for the collector, such a handbook would have to be more than the two volumes. As a result, Classical Numismatic Group is publishing "The Handbook of Greek Coinage Series" of 13 volumes, each covering a specified area of Greek coinage with the first being "The Handbook of Syrian Coins: Royal and Civic Issues, Fourth to First Centuries BC" (Volume 9 in the series). This series is designed to aid the user in the quick and accurate identification of Greek coins, while providing a cross-reference for each entry to a major work.The latest published volume in the series is "Handbook of Coins of Italy and Magna Graecia, Sixth to First Centuries BC" (Volume 1 in the series). Beginning with Ancona in Picenum, the catalog covers Italy and Magna Graecia from north to south, with each region in alphabetical order. The coinage within each city is arranged chronologically, beginning with the Archaic issues and continuing through the later civic issues. Issues in this catalog are arranged with silver first, followed by bronze; each metal is arranged by denomination, largest to smallest--Cf. Preface to the series.