Tetradrachm In the name of Lysimachos, Byzantion

By the late second century BC, Byzantion had long abandoned any pretense that these coins honored the historical Lysimachos — the Thracian king had been dead for nearly two centuries. The city used his iconic deified portrait type purely as a trade currency, trusted across the Black Sea and Aegean commercial networks precisely because the type was so widely recognized. This was monetary pragmatism, not commemoration.

The Byzantion civic issues of this period are distinguished from earlier royal and other civic imitations by their magistrate monograms and control marks, the specific combination of which ties individual dies to HGC 3.2#1406.