Drachm - Simia

Sinope was the most powerful Greek colony on the Black Sea coast, and by the late fourth century BC its silver coinage circulated widely through Pontic trade networks reaching as far as the Crimean settlements. The magistrate name Simia appearing on this issue places it within a documented sequence of eponymous officials whose tenures help date the city's later autonomous silver output — autonomous being the operative word, as Philip II and later Macedonian pressure repeatedly threatened Sinope's independence during precisely this period.