Stater In the name of Lysimachus

Byzantion issued posthumous gold staters in the name of Lysimachus — the Macedonian general who had died at the Battle of Corupedium in 281 BC — well over a century after his death. This was not nostalgia. By the second century BC, Lysimachean types had become the dominant prestige currency of the Black Sea and Aegean trade networks, and cities like Byzantion struck them simply because merchants demanded them. The type functioned almost as a brand.

Byzantion's control of the Bosphorus tolls made it one of the wealthiest transit points in the Hellenistic world, giving the city both motive and silver — and gold — to sustain an active mint.