Hemidrachm

Aptera was one of Crete's more durable poleis, surviving internecine conflict and Macedonian interference long enough to mint continuously into the late Hellenistic period. The city's coinage effectively ends with Rome's brutal suppression of Crete in 67 BC under Quintus Caecilius Metellus — an operation so thorough it earned him the cognomen Creticus and extinguished civic minting across the island for a generation.