Trihemiobol

Teos, the Ionian coastal city best known as the birthplace of the lyric poet Anacreon, struck silver fractional coinage during a period of acute political disruption. Around 540 BC the entire citizen population famously abandoned the city rather than submit to Persian rule under Harpagus, relocating en masse to Abdera in Thrace — an episode recorded by Herodotus. By the mid-fifth century the city had been resettled, and this trihemiobol belongs to the coinage produced under the restored community, likely circulating alongside Athenian owls imported through Aegean trade networks.