Tetradrachm - Onasandros

Rhodes struck this tetradrachm under the magistrate Onasandros during a period when the island republic was at the height of its naval influence in the Aegean, operating an effective quasi-police function against piracy that larger Hellenistic powers tolerated largely because it suited them. That arrangement began to unravel after 167 BC, when Rome stripped Rhodes of its Aegean trading privileges following the Third Macedonian War — but Onasandros's issues predate that humiliation, belonging instead to a confident, solvent mint.

The planchet fabric characteristic of this magistrate's issues tends toward slightly irregular flan edges, a known feature across multiple catalogued die pairs in the Ashton sequence.