Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
Tetrobol - Protes
| Issuer | Abdera |
|---|---|
| Year | 411 BC - 385 BC |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | Log in to see details |
| Diameter | 14.0 mm |
| Thickness | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Technique | Log in to see details |
| Orientation | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | Griffin springing to left in bold archaic style, with large spread wings rendered in fine incised feather detail, muscular leonine hindquarters, and upward-turned eagle-beaked head. The forelegs are fully extended in a vigorous leaping pose, conveying powerful forward motion. The city ethnic abbreviation ΑΒΔ appears in the right field. The type reflects the canonical Abderite griffin, a device closely associated with the city's coinage throughout the Classical period. The design is executed with confident die-cutting typical of the Thracian mint's output in the early fourth century BC. |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Log in to see details |
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Log in to see details |
| Reverse script | Log in to see details |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Edge | Plain |
| Mint | Log in to see details |
| Mintage | Log in to see details |
| Additional information |
Abdera was one of the wealthiest cities in Thrace during the fifth century, its prosperity built almost entirely on control of regional trade routes and its position as a hub for commerce between the Greek world and the Thracian interior. The city issued coins with unusual consistency and in considerable variety, with magistrate names rotated through the coinage in a system scholars have used to construct a rough chronological sequence — the "Protes" series falling in the later phase of this output, after Abdera had already weathered Athenian political pressure and Persian occupation.
Abdera was the birthplace of Democritus, and by the period of this issue the city's intellectual reputation was at its height while its political independence was increasingly precarious.