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Tetradrachm - Mostis
| Issuer | Caeni (Thrace) |
|---|---|
| Year | 113 BC - 87 BC |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | 16.56 g |
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| Obverse description | Draped bust of King Mostis facing right, rendered in the Hellenistic portrait tradition with fine curly hair bound by a taenia. The portrait displays youthful idealized features with a strong profile, the neck partially draped in a chlamys visible at the truncation. The flan is broad and slightly irregular, with no legend on the obverse, the portrait filling the entire field in the manner of late Hellenistic Thracian dynastic coinage. |
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| Reverse script | Greek |
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| Additional information |
The Caeni were a minor Thracian tribe whose coinage is almost entirely defined by a single political reality: proximity to the expanding Macedonian and later Roman spheres of influence forced them to produce silver on a Greek weight standard to remain viable in regional commerce. Mostis, whose name appears on these tetradrachms, is known only through his coins — no literary source records him. Whether he was a dynast, a tribal chief, or something in between remains unresolved.
The type's wide distribution across major collections from Copenhagen to the Zhuyuetang suggests reasonably broad circulation for a tribal issue, yet the Caeni left no successor coinage after the late first century BC.