Tetradrachm

Rhodes was unified as a single polis in 408 BC through the synoikism of its three older cities — Ialysos, Kamiros, and Lindos — a deliberate political consolidation that prompted the foundation of the new city of Rhodes and an immediate need for civic coinage to assert the new entity's identity. This tetradrachm belongs to that founding moment, issued within the first years of the new mint's operation.

Ashton's classification of this type places it among the earliest emissions from the Rhodes mint, before the iconographic program fully stabilized.