Tetradrachm

Marathos was a Phoenician coastal city on a small island connected to the mainland by a causeway, located near modern Tartus in Syria. The city maintained remarkable autonomy under Seleucid overlordship and developed its own civic era for dating purposes — one of the relatively few Phoenician cities to do so. This tetradrachm falls in the early decades of that era, initiated around 259/8 BC, placing it roughly in year 32 or 33 of Marathan civic reckoning.

The city was eventually destroyed by neighboring Arados, its more powerful rival, sometime in the mid-2nd century BC — making all surviving Marathan civic coinage a product of a civilization with a finite and documented end date.