Hemidrachm

Patrai was one of the Achaean cities that suffered badly following the Roman destruction of Corinth in 146 BC, and the decades that followed saw drastically reduced civic coin production across the northern Peloponnese. This hemidrachm, struck around 86 BC, falls within a period when Achaea was being systematically stripped of resources by Sulla's forces prosecuting the Mithridatic War — the same campaign that saw the Roman general loot the treasuries of Olympia, Epidauros, and Delphi.

The BCD collection, from which the reference derives, remains the definitive assemblage for Peloponnesian bronzes and silvers; BCD 505 establishes the attribution firmly within Patrai's late civic series.