Tetradrachm

Lyttos was one of the oldest and most belligerent of the Cretan city-states, destroyed outright by Knossos around 220 BC — its citizens away at war when the walls came down — and subsequently rebuilt. That the city recovered sufficiently to strike silver tetradrachms of this weight standard is itself a mark of its reconstituted civic ambition. The Cretan koinon period, roughly contemporary with this issue, saw intermittent cooperation among cities that had spent centuries at each other's throats.

The Dewing specimen (no. 2062) remains a key reference point for attributing this type, given how sparsely documented Lyttian coinage is relative to more prolific Cretan mints like Knossos or Gortyna.