Stater

Thespiai sat at the foot of Mount Helikon in Boeotia, perpetually overshadowed by Thebes politically yet maintaining its own civic coinage with stubborn independence. The city's loyalty to Sparta during the Peloponnesian War earned it a near-fatal reprisal: Thebes demolished Thespiai's walls in 423 BC and again more thoroughly after Leuktra in 371 BC, reducing it to a dependent community. That this stater exists at all suggests it was struck in the window before Theban hegemony tightened completely, when Thespiai briefly reasserted enough autonomy to issue silver on the Aiginetic standard.