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Tetradrachm Antiadas

Issuer Ainos
Year 453 BC - 450 BC
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Reference(s) May, Ainos#85, HGC 3.2#1267, Kraay&Hirm#421, Jameson#1050, McClean#3824, AMNG II#279
Obverse description Youthful head of Hermes facing right, rendered in fine early Classical style with delicate facial features and naturalistic hair finely engraved in short strokes. The deity wears a broad-brimmed petasos adorned with a prominent pelleted rim formed by a continuous row of raised pellets. The city ethnic ΑΙΝΙ is incised across the crown of the petasos in four bold Greek letters, serving simultaneously as part of the hat's decoration and as the civic legend. The portrait displays a high degree of artistic refinement characteristic of Thracian mint engravers of the mid-fifth century BC.
Obverse script Greek
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Additional information

Ainos — a Thracian coastal city at the mouth of the Hebros River — was a member of the Delian League during this period, paying tribute to Athens while maintaining its own robust silver coinage funded by regional trade and the rich agricultural hinterland of the Hebros valley. These tetradrachms circulated across the northern Aegean commercial network, competing with the dominant Athenian owls but serving local exchange where Athenian coinage was less entrenched.

The Antiadas issues are distinguished within the Ainos series by magistrate name, placing this piece within May's careful die study as one of the better-documented sequential groups from the mid-fifth century mint.

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