Tetradrachm - Metrodoros, Demosthenes and Eukrates

This piece belongs to the so-called "New Style" Athenian tetradrachm series, which Athens adopted around 196 BC as a conscious break from the archaic "old owl" coinage that had circulated with minimal change for centuries. The new issues were struck by rotating magistrates — here Metrodoros, Demosthenes, and Eukrates — whose names appear as the primary dating mechanism in the absence of regnal years. By the 110s BC, Athens operated under shifting Roman influence following the sack of Corinth in 146 BC, and these coins increasingly served inter-regional trade across the Aegean rather than a genuinely independent Athenian economy.

Thompson's 1961 corpus remains the definitive reference for this series. 642a places this emission within a closely sequenced die study.