Drachm - Leontiskos

Miletos had long been one of the most commercially active cities on the Aegean coast, and its silver coinage circulated well beyond Ionia into the Black Sea trade networks the city had spent centuries cultivating. By the mid-third century BC, Miletos was operating under Seleucid influence following Alexander's successors' division of western Asia Minor, and local civic coinage like this issue represented one of the few remaining expressions of municipal autonomy in monetary affairs.

The leontiskos type is associated with a specific magistrate series at Miletos, with individual issues distinguished by the controlling magistrate's name — a practice that allows modern scholars to sequence the coinage with unusual precision relative to most Hellenistic civic issues.