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Tetradrachm In the name of Lysimachus
| Issuer | Byzantion (Thrace) |
|---|---|
| Year | 150 BC - 120 BC |
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| Orientation | Variable alignment ↺ |
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| Obverse description | Diademed head of the deified Alexander the Great facing right, wearing the horn of Ammon above his right ear, a dynastic attribute associating him with Zeus-Ammon. The hair is rendered in lively, flowing locks swept back from the forehead in the characteristic Lysimachean portrait style. The facial features are finely modeled with a strong nose and idealized Hellenistic physiognomy. A small control mark appears in the left field. The portrait closely follows the established iconographic tradition of posthumous Lysimachean coinage, here continued by the mint of Byzantion. |
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| Reverse lettering | ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΛΥΣΙΜΑΧΟΥ ΒΥ |
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| Additional information |
Byzantion struck posthumous tetradrachms in the name of Lysimachus well over a century after his death at Corupedium in 281 BC — a calculated political move by a city that understood the commercial weight his image carried across the Aegean trading world. By the mid-second century, these coins functioned less as royal propaganda than as trusted trade currency, their types so widely recognized that Byzantion's own civic magistrates added control marks to distinguish local issues from the broader flood of Lysimachean coinage circulating from dozens of mints. Marinescu's classification of this piece as #463 places it within a tightly sequenced group attributable to Byzantion's own dies.