Tetradrachm - Zeno

Lebedos was among the least consequential of the Ionian coastal cities — so marginal, in fact, that Strabo reported it had been nearly depopulated by the time of Augustus, its citizens forcibly relocated to Ephesus by Lysimachus generations earlier. That this civic coinage exists at all reflects a partial recovery during the mid-second century BC, when the city reasserted enough autonomy to mint on the Attic standard under the magistrate name Zeno. The Fitzwilliam specimen (catalogued as 4496) remains a key reference point for attributing die links within this compressed series.