The Oitaioi
Didrachm after 167, AR 7.64 g. Lion's head l. with spear in its jaws. Rev. OITAI / ΩN Youthful Heracles standing facing, wearing ivy-wreath, holding club and lion skin. de Nanteuil 850 (this coin). SNG Copenhagen 179. Valassiadis, The Coinage of the Oitaeans, in Obolos 7, 10. BCD Thessaly I, 1217 (this coin). BCD Thessaly II, –.
Extremely rare and possibly the finest specimen in private hands. Struck on
excellent metal and with a superb old cabinet tone. Minor marks on
obverse field, otherwise extremely fine

Ex Hess/Leu 31, 1966, 285; McSorley-Adams FPL 2, 1968, 49 and Nomos 4, 2011, BCD, 1217 sales. Privately purchased by BCD S. Boutin in July 1968. From the De Nanteuil collection.
The types of this didrachm of the Oitaioi focus on the mythology of Herakles because it was within their territory that the greatest of all Greek heroes met his tragic end and subsequently ascended to the gods. Deianeira, the wife of Herakles, was almost carried off by the Centaur Nessos as she attempted to cross the Euenos River. She was saved by the timely arrival of Herakles, who shot the Centaur with a poisoned arrow. However, as Nessos lay dying, he told Deianeira to make a potion from his blood that he said would ensure the fidelity of her husband—Herakles had the unfortunate habit of fathering children with other women throughout Greece, Italy, the Near East, and North Africa. Deianeira followed his instructions and soaked her husband’s shirt in the blood, not realizing that it was contaminated with the poison (the venom of the Lernean Hydra) of the arrow that killed Nessos. When Herakles put on the shirt, the poison immediately began to burn his flesh and realizing that it would ultimately kill him, Herakles ascended Mount Oita, the mountain from which the Oitaioi derived their name, and built his own funeral pyre at the summit. Casting himself onto the flaming pyre, Herakles destroyed his mortal self, but freed his immortal self to rise to join the Olympian gods.