Obol Mantineia

The Arcadian League's federal coinage, produced at Mantineia, was among the earliest attempts in the Greek world to issue coins under a shared federal authority rather than a single city-state — a political arrangement that made this mint unusual for its time. Mantineia's role as a minting center ended abruptly in 385 BC when the Spartans forcibly dissolved the city, scattering its population into villages in a process the Greeks called synoikismos in reverse. The coins predate that destruction by decades.