Rhegion (Bruttium, Italy), Tetradrachm (silver coin replica) 466 - 415 BC.
OBV: Lion's scalp facing.
R: RECINOΣ, Iokastos, the traditional founder of the city, naked to waist and seated l. holding staff and resting l. hand on hip. All within laurel-wreath. Original worth c. £1250.

Rhegion was colonized from Chalkis about 720BC. The city was outside the commercial and military sphere of Kroton and Sybaris. Consequently it became closely connected with her sister Chalkidian colonies in Sicily. In 494 BC, after the Persian reconquest, exiles from Ionia, chiefly Samanians, landed in Italy and were persuaded by Anaxilas, tyrant of Rhegion, to cross the Straits to Sicily and seize the town of Zancle, later named Messana. Once victorious, the Samians were then expelled or subjugated by an ungrateful Anaxilas. Curiously, the facing lion's head seems to have been adopted in Rhegion after the death of Anaxilas in 476 BC as a modification of the badge of the city of Samos and an expression of liberation from tyranny.