Tetradrachm - Polemon, Alketes and Timo...

This tetradrachm belongs to the New Style series introduced by Athens around 196 BC, a coinage reform designed to restore Athenian commercial credibility after decades of monetary irrelevance. The magistrate combination of Polemon, Alketes, and Timo dates this piece precisely within that sequence — Thompson's die study remains the essential reference for placing individual issues within the series' chronology. By the 120s BC, New Style tetradrachms were circulating well beyond Attica, accepted across the Aegean as a reliable trade currency at a moment when Rome had not yet imposed a single dominant silver standard on the eastern Mediterranean.