Stater

Mallos occupied a strategically awkward position on the Cilician plain, near the mouth of the Pyramos river, and its right to strike coinage was a point of recurring political tension. The city was periodically claimed by Persian satraps, by the Argive dynastic line it promoted as its founding myth, and eventually became one of several Cilician mints producing silver for regional trade rather than imperial remittance. This stater belongs to a period when Mallos maintained enough autonomy to operate its mint on its own terms — a window that would narrow considerably by the mid-fourth century.