Laodikeia ad Lycum — the Phrygian city, not to be confused with the Syrian namesake — issued this tetradrachm during the period when Cicero served as governor of Cilicia, a province that then incorporated much of inland Phrygia. The city had been refounded by the Seleucid king Antiochus II in the third century BC and named for his wife Laodike, and by the first century BC it had grown into one of the wealthiest banking centers in Asia Minor. Cicero himself noted the city's financial sophistication in his letters.
The narrow date range aligns with the final years before Caesar's civil wars disrupted provincial coin production across the eastern Mediterranean.
Laodikeia ad Lycum — the Phrygian city, not to be confused with the Syrian namesake — issued this tetradrachm during the period when Cicero served as governor of Cilicia, a province that then incorporated much of inland Phrygia. The city had been refounded by the Seleucid king Antiochus II in the third century BC and named for his wife Laodike, and by the first century BC it had grown into one of the wealthiest banking centers in Asia Minor. Cicero himself noted the city's financial sophistication in his letters.
The narrow date range aligns with the final years before Caesar's civil wars disrupted provincial coin production across the eastern Mediterranean.