Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
Tetradrachm B-reiter Type
| Issuer | Dacians of Transylvania |
|---|---|
| Year | 200 BC - 101 BC |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Drachm |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | Log in to see details |
| Diameter | Log in to see details |
| Thickness | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Technique | Log in to see details |
| Orientation | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | Stylized male head facing right, derived from the Macedonian prototype of Philip II or Alexander III, rendered in the characteristic Dacian-Celtic abstract manner. The effigy is adorned with a laurel wreath, its leaves depicted in a highly schematized, almost geometric fashion extending prominently into the left field. The hair is rendered as bold, deeply engraved curvilinear locks, and the facial features — eye, nose, and chin — are reduced to abstracted plastic forms with dotted pellet detailing at the jaw and neck. The portrait is set within a beaded border on an irregular flan typical of locally struck barbarous issues. |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Log in to see details |
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Log in to see details |
| Reverse script | Log in to see details |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Edge | Plain |
| Mint | Log in to see details |
| Mintage | Log in to see details |
| Additional information |
The Dacian imitations of Macedonian tetradrachms evolved through successive generations of copying until the original Philippic prototype became almost unrecognizable — horses dissolved into abstract lines, riders into geometric suggestion. This progressive stylization was not incompetence but a deliberate regional aesthetic that accelerated over the second century BC as Transylvanian workshops drifted further from the source material.
The B-reiter designation groups a specific typological branch within this degeneration sequence, distinguished by how the horseman figure was rendered across successive die generations. Kostial's cataloguing remains the essential reference, though attribution of individual specimens to precise workshops is rarely possible given the decentralized nature of Dacian minting before the consolidation under Burebista around 60 BC.