Chalkon

Iasos, a coastal Carian city with a natural harbor that made it prosperous enough to mint its own bronze, produced these small divisional pieces during a period when the city oscillated between Persian and Greek spheres of influence — aligned with Sparta after the Peloponnesian War, then ceded back to Persia under the terms of the King's Peace in 387 BC. The chalkon sits at the bottom of the bronze denomination hierarchy, everyday coinage used in the agora rather than in inter-city trade.