Tetrobol - AH / M PΠΔ

Massalia maintained remarkable monetary independence long after Rome had absorbed most of its neighbors, continuing to strike silver on the Greek standard well into the first century BC. This tetrobol type, attributed to the late La Tène period, circulated through one of the ancient Mediterranean's busiest trading ports — a city whose commercial reach into the Gaulish interior gave its coinage genuine transactional life beyond the city walls. The MHM#55 var designation signals a die or control mark deviation from the primary catalogued specimen, and Massalian minor silver of this period shows considerable variety in exactly those small marks.