The coins of the ancient cities in Southern Italy markedly differed from the rest of the coins within the Greek world: While the relief was embossed on the one side, it was engraved on the other. The dies thus had to be aligned very accurately to correspond.
In Poseidonia (Paestum) the city's god Poseidon was depicted on the coins. Poseidon, who was in his main function the god of water and the ocean, was also the god of earthquakes – obviously a well-chosen patron for Southern Italy, where earthquakes occurred quite frequently.