Tetradrachm - Aristeides

Samos operated under Athenian political orbit for much of the fifth century, but the island's coinage reasserted a distinctly local identity during the early fourth century as Athenian hegemony fractured after the Peloponnesian War. The magistrate name Aristeides appearing on this issue places it within the period of restored Samian autonomy — Athens had expelled the original Samian population in 365 BC and replaced them with Athenian cleruchs, making any civic coinage struck before that expulsion a product of the last generation of independent Samian civic life.

The Hecatomnus reference situates this type in a broader Aegean numismatic tradition rather than a purely Samian one — a detail that speaks to the commercial reach of Samian silver across the eastern Mediterranean.