Klazomenai's silver coinage of the mid-second century BC was produced under the shadow of Seleucid and then Attalid pressure on Ionian coastal cities, with local mints asserting civic identity precisely when political autonomy was most precarious. The city had a long, complicated relationship with its own geography — originally on the mainland, it was connected to an offshore island by a causeway Alexander the Great reportedly ordered constructed during his Ionian campaigns.
Tetradrachms of this weight class from Klazomenai are considerably scarcer than the city's earlier electrum issues, for which it was better known in antiquity.
Klazomenai's silver coinage of the mid-second century BC was produced under the shadow of Seleucid and then Attalid pressure on Ionian coastal cities, with local mints asserting civic identity precisely when political autonomy was most precarious. The city had a long, complicated relationship with its own geography — originally on the mainland, it was connected to an offshore island by a causeway Alexander the Great reportedly ordered constructed during his Ionian campaigns.
Tetradrachms of this weight class from Klazomenai are considerably scarcer than the city's earlier electrum issues, for which it was better known in antiquity.