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Description
Starting from the third century BC, the Oscan-speaking communities of the Central and Southern Italy began to strike autonomous coin issues based on the earlier samples of the Magna Graecia mints. The coins attributed to the Frentani, were struck in bronze, bearing Oscan legend, with the exception of coins from Larinum, whose legends are in Greek or in Oscan, in the Latin alphabet. This peculiarity reflects how different Larinum was from the other settlements of the Frentanian district, as the city saw a precocious urbanization and a greater participation in the Hellenistic 'koine' in the Italian Peninsula in the 3rd and 2nd century BC, possibly the result of the growing influence of Rome. The focus of this paper is to reexamine the data related to the circulation of the Frentanian coins and their political value in the context of the Italian communities.
