Hemidrachm - Demetrius I Poliorcetes Tarsos

Demetrius I Poliorcetes seized Cilicia — and its mint at Tarsos — around 298 BC following complex maneuvering against the other Diadochi successors of Alexander. The Tarsos mint had a long history of silver production under Persian satrapies and the Macedonian kings before him, and Demetrius exploited its infrastructure quickly. This hemidrachm belongs to a brief window of his control over the region before Pyrrhus and Lysimachus stripped him of his remaining territories by 288 BC. Newell's die study of this series remains the foundational reference, identifying Tarsos output by specific obverse die linkages.