Tetradrachm B-reiter Type

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.