Tetradrachm - Herakleides, Euklesi... and Dionysos

Issued under the magistrates Herakleides, Eukleides, and Dionysos, this piece belongs to the so-called New Style series that Athens adopted around 166 BC following the Roman grant of Delos as a free port — an arrangement that flooded the city with commercial traffic and demanded a reformed, internationally recognizable coinage. The New Style tetradrachm was Athens' answer to the dominance of Macedonian royal types across eastern Mediterranean trade routes.

By 105/104 BC, Athenian civic finances were increasingly strained by the First Mithridatic War's approaching disruptions. Thompson 745c places this emission within a well-documented magistrate sequence, making die linkage studies tractable for specialists working the series.