Damastion was a mining city in the mountainous interior of Illyria whose silver coinage circulated primarily among Greek trading partners rather than the indigenous population — the city's wealth derived from the exceptionally rich ore deposits of the region, and its tetradrachms functioned largely as a commercial currency for bulk transactions. This piece, signed by the magistrate Kephisophon, belongs to a series catalogued by May whose attribution to specific civic officers helped establish the relative chronology of the entire Damastion coinage.
The city itself disappears from the historical record by the mid-4th century, almost certainly absorbed into the expanding Macedonian sphere under Philip II.
Damastion was a mining city in the mountainous interior of Illyria whose silver coinage circulated primarily among Greek trading partners rather than the indigenous population — the city's wealth derived from the exceptionally rich ore deposits of the region, and its tetradrachms functioned largely as a commercial currency for bulk transactions. This piece, signed by the magistrate Kephisophon, belongs to a series catalogued by May whose attribution to specific civic officers helped establish the relative chronology of the entire Damastion coinage.
The city itself disappears from the historical record by the mid-4th century, almost certainly absorbed into the expanding Macedonian sphere under Philip II.