Diobol

Lampsakos occupied a strategically loaded position on the eastern shore of the Hellespont, and its mint was active precisely because of it — the city extracted considerable wealth from traffic passing between the Aegean and the Black Sea. During the period this diobol was struck, Lampsakos sat within the Persian satrapy of Hellespontine Phrygia, meaning its coinage circulated in a zone where Greek commercial practice and Achaemenid administrative reach overlapped in uneasy proximity.