Drachm - Pytheos

Klazomenai occupied an awkward geographic position on a peninsula in the Gulf of Smyrna, and by the mid-fourth century the city had spent decades under shifting Achaemenid and Athenian pressures. The magistrate name Pytheos appearing on this issue places it within a relatively narrow administrative window, and the SNG Munich and BMC references together allow reasonably confident die-study alignment. Klazomenai's silver output from this period is modest in volume, which is consistent with a polis that derived more economic weight from its olive oil trade than from any mint-driven monetary program.