Stater In the name of Lysimachus

Byzantion continued striking posthumous staters in the name of Lysimachus well over a century after his death at Corupedium in 281 BC — a practice that reflects the enormous commercial prestige these coins had accumulated across Black Sea and Aegean trade networks. By the second century BC, the type had effectively become a trade currency, its recognizability more valuable than any association with the long-dead king who first authorized it. Byzantion's position controlling the Bosphorus strait gave the city both the bullion access and the commercial reach to sustain this anachronistic but economically rational coinage.