Una moneta di Pirro in un gruzzoletto da Montesarchio (BN)

This paper discusses an unpublished hoard of bronze coins found in a small coarseware olla from Caudium (Montesarchio, province of Benevento), a settlement in the part of the Caudine Valley served by the Appian way. The hoard is composed by 30 coins from different Campanian mints (Neapolis, Cales e Suessa) and a single Pyrrhic coin. The coins from the colonies, (6 from Suessa, 2 from Cales e 1 with an illegible ethnic denomination) are all of the Athena head/Cock type. This is a small but significant sample of the bronze coinage in circulation in the Caudine Samnium where the arrival of coins from Neapolis and Latin colonies between the Tarantine War and the first Punic war, must have prompted trade based on coin exchange. Such trade was must have been also encourages by the use of coins reproducing types known in the region. It is not a case that not too far away from Caudium, in the territory later occupied by the Roman Telesia tribe, was located the center of the Caudini Samnites. Numismatists now attribute to this area the production of the rare bronze coin of the Athena/Cock type with the Oscan inscription Tedis (=Teris), a legenda that only recently has been interpreted as a name of a person, and not as an ethnic name. Furthermore, the presence of the Pyrrhic coin in the hoard offers an important piece of evidence to solve the questions about the origin of the bronze coin series minted in Pyrrhus’ name. Until now there was no definitive data that would prove whether the coins were minted in Sicily, at Locri, or in Epirus, and –in this latter case– before or after Pyrrhus’ expedition to Italy. Strong similarities this bronze series and the coins minted by the Epirote symmachy make us believe that they were produced in Epirus. However, the discovery of this coin in the territory of Benevento, not too far away from the site of the battle between the army of Pyrrhus and the Romans, must mean that the production of these coins happened before the Pyrrhus’ return to Epirus