Tetradrachm

Smyrna's tetradrachm series spans a politically turbulent stretch of western Anatolia — the city passed from Seleucid influence into the Roman sphere following Apamea in 188 BC, and this coinage reflects that long transitional period when civic mints reasserted local identity under shifting overlords. The types catalogued under SNG von Aulock 7975 and Copenhagen 1119 belong to the mature phase of this autonomous civic output.

Smyrna had been refounded at its current site by Lysimachus in the early third century BC, and the city's numismatic program was in many ways a statement of that relatively recent but fiercely promoted civic prestige.