Chalkon - Moschos

Smyrna in the late second century BC was one of the most prosperous cities on the Aegean coast, and its civic bronze coinage of this period reflects the administrative confidence of a city that had cultivated close ties with Rome since at least 195 BC, when Smyrna became one of the first eastern cities to build a temple to the goddess Roma. The magistrate name Moschos appearing on this issue places it within a documented sequence of eponymous officials responsible for authorizing local bronze production during a decade increasingly shadowed by the westward ambitions of Mithridates VI of Pontus.

The First Mithridatic War broke out in 88 BC, and Smyrna fell under Pontic pressure during the early 80s. Chalka of precisely this type effectively ceased production when the city's civic autonomy was disrupted.