TETRASSARION: COIN OF OLBIA (MODERN UKRAINE)
Tetrassarion, 1st century: Olbia (dependence on the Roman Empire)
Ancient coin of the Greek colony of Olbia (modern Mykolaiv region, southern Ukraine) during the time when those territories were part of the Roman province of Lower Moesia.
Some catalogs identify this coin as Æ24.
An eagle riding a dolphin.
Apollo — one of the Olympian deities in classical Greek and Roman religion and Greek and Roman mythology (according to other numismatic sources, it is a portrait of the ruling archon).
OΛBIOPOΛEI: Olbia.
Counterstamp in the form of a star.
- Bronze: 25 mm - 6.92 g
- Reference price: 14$
COIN TETRASSARION — WHERE & WHEN (coins catalog: by names & emitents)
- ROMAN PROVINCES (Cilicia, Moesia, Thracia..., 1st-3rd centuries): tetrassarion = 4 assaria
TETRASSARION as coin name.
Tetrassarion (plural: tetrassaria) — copper or bronze coin of Greek settlements mainly on the shores of the Black Sea during the period of Roman rule: from the middle of the 1st century AD. Equivalent to 4 assaria.
Almost all known tetrassarion coins belong to the numismatic section "Roman provinces". The most famous are the tetrassaria of Cilicia, Tyre, Chersonesus, Thracia, Moesia, Nicaea...
In fact, the situation with the tetrassarion is quite confusing... This coins were usually issued in the territory of Greek settlements, where before that Greek coins always dominated — obol, chalkon, drachm... But at the beginning of our era, these cities fall under total influence Rome, where was widely used coin with name As. That's when the assarion appears (to some extent a derivative or related coin to As), which can be attributed to the Roman monetary system, and also the tetrassarion — four assaria...
That is, the emission of assarion and tetrassarion is attributed by most numismatic sources to Greek settlements under the influence of the Romans, while As is a purely Roman coin.
In the collections of Ukrainian numismatists, it is perhaps the easiest to find tetrassaria of Olbia (a Greek colony founded by natives of Miletus in the deltas of the Southern Bug and Dnipro — now Mykolaiv Oblast, Ukraine). Each such coin contains an image of Apollo with the features of a ruling archon (ruler) and an eagle. Almost all such tetrassaria contain counterstamps (countermarked coins). The stamp/mark was often applied a second time or even a third time... In this way, either the relevance of the indicated denomination was confirmed, or the denomination was changed to a higher or lower one.
The name of the tetrassarion coin is related to the Greek word "τέσσερα" (tetras) — "four" and means that the coin is equal to four assaria.
