Stater In the name of Lysimachus

Byzantion's posthumous gold staters struck in the name of Lysimachus — who had died at Corupedium in 281 BC, over a century before these were made — exploited the enduring commercial credibility of his coinage type across the Black Sea trade network. By the mid-second century, his name functioned less as a royal attribution than as a trusted monetary brand, recognized by merchants from the Pontic coast to the Aegean. Byzantion, strategically positioned at the Bosporus strait and collecting tolls from every ship passing between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, had both the bullion supply and the commercial motive to keep issuing them.