IONIA. Klazomenai. Circa 170-151/0 BC. Tetradrachm (Silver, 32 mm, 16.81 g, 12 h), Attic standard. Laureate head of Zeus to right, bearded and with a strand of hair falling loose before the forehead. Rev. ΔIOΣ ΣΩTHPOΣ - EΠIΦANOYΣ / KΛAZO Amazon standing front, head to left, holding spear in her right hand and double-axe in her left and wearing a sword on her waist; at feet to left, palm branch lying on the ground. Meadows 2 (A1/-). H. Seyrig: Monnaies Hellénistiques, in: RN 1971, p. 25, fig. 1 (same obverse die). Extremely rare. An exceptional coin, the finest of apparently just six known civic tetradrachms from this city. Boldly struck on a full flan and with a magnificent head of Zeus of full Hellenistic style. Nearly extremely fine.

The extremely rare civic tetradrachms of Klazomenai are among the most impressive of the many civic silver series emerging in western Asia Minor in the second quarter of the 2nd century BC. They show, on the obverse, a monumental head laureate of Zeus and a heavily armed Amazon on the reverse. Of particular interest is the unusual reverse legend, which identifies the coin as an issue of Zeus Soter Epiphanes, a god whose worship had no tradition in the earlier history of Klazomenai. Meadows connects his appearance with the gift of the island Drymoussa to the Klazomeneans in the Treaty of Apameia in 188 BC, as a later inscription from that island records the worship of Zeus Soter in situ. Fortunately, hoard dating provides a secure terminus ante quem for the issue of 151/0 BC, placing it to a time for which we have epigraphic record for a Knidian peace judgement following a war between Klazomenai and Teos over land rights. He suggests that the Klazomenean issue of civic tetradrachms should be seen in connection with this otherwise unknown war, as should the unusual and abundant late Temnean tetradrachms in the types of Alexander (Price 1667 ff., independently redated to 162-151 by C. Lorber)