Tetradrachm

Tenedos sat at the mouth of the Hellespont, and the island's wealth derived almost entirely from its position as a mandatory toll stop for grain ships moving between the Black Sea and the Aegean. By the late second century BC, that leverage was eroding — Rhodes and later Rome had restructured Aegean trade routes in ways that bypassed smaller intermediary ports. These tetradrachms were struck in the island's final period of meaningful monetary independence, before Tenedos faded into administrative obscurity under Roman provincial reorganization.

The fabric is notably broad and thin relative to earlier Tenedian issues, reflecting Hellenistic die practices of the period rather than any local anomaly.