Tetradrachm In the name of Lysimachus

Byzantion issued posthumous tetradrachms in the name of Lysimachus — the Macedonian general who died at the Battle of Corupedium in 281 BC — decades after his death, a common practice among cities seeking to leverage his political brand for commercial credibility. By the early second century, these coins functioned less as royal propaganda than as a trusted trade currency across the Black Sea and Aegean networks, where the Lysimachan type had earned wide acceptance among merchants who cared more about silver content than the issuing authority's politics. Byzantion's position controlling the Bosphorus strait made its coinage particularly consequential for eastern grain trade.