Dyrrachion — the Greek colonial city on the Adriatic coast known to Romans as Dyrrachium — issued these drachms in enormous quantities throughout the Hellenistic period, functioning as the dominant trade currency along the Via Egnatia corridor long before Rome formalized that road. The paired magistrate names, here Eutuchos and Exakestos, were rotating civic officials whose names served as a dating mechanism; over a hundred such pairings are catalogued, making die linkage studies the primary tool for sequencing the series.
The Maier corpus remains the standard reference for this coinage, though attribution of specific pairs to narrow date ranges within the 229–100 BC window is still contested in scholarship.
Dyrrachion — the Greek colonial city on the Adriatic coast known to Romans as Dyrrachium — issued these drachms in enormous quantities throughout the Hellenistic period, functioning as the dominant trade currency along the Via Egnatia corridor long before Rome formalized that road. The paired magistrate names, here Eutuchos and Exakestos, were rotating civic officials whose names served as a dating mechanism; over a hundred such pairings are catalogued, making die linkage studies the primary tool for sequencing the series.
The Maier corpus remains the standard reference for this coinage, though attribution of specific pairs to narrow date ranges within the 229–100 BC window is still contested in scholarship.