Hemidrachm

Sparta's coinage history is one of the strangest in the Greek world — the classical city famously prohibited precious metal coinage for centuries, relying instead on iron spits. When silver issues finally appeared under Roman dominance, they were products of a city performing its own mythology rather than a functioning monetary economy. This hemidrachm dates to the period when Sparta, stripped of real power, leaned aggressively into its Lycurgan identity as a cultural brand acceptable to Roman tastes.

BCD 865.2 places this piece within a closely documented sequence from the BCD collection sale, one of the defining reference points for Peloponnesian bronze and silver of the Achaean and post-Achaean periods.