Tetradrachm

Samos operated one of the more politically complicated mints of the fourth century Aegean. The island's coinage was suppressed entirely during the Athenian cleruchy established in 365 BC, when Athenian settlers displaced the indigenous population — making issues struck before that expulsion the last autonomous Samian silver for a generation. Barron's die study identified significant variation in this series, and specimen 118 falls within a sequence suggesting the mint was working at considerable volume in the decade before political control collapsed.