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Description Greek. Hellenistic Period. Kingdom of Pontus. Mithradates VI Eupator (r. 120-63 BC) AV (Gold) stater. Mint of Callatis; first Mithridatic/Roman War issue, struck 88-86 BC. Types of Lysimachus of Thrace (r. 306-281 BC). Choice XF; struck at the opening of the Pontic king's quarter-century clash with the Roman Republic. Mithradates initially overran Roman Asia Minor and even campaigned in Roman Greece before being defeated by Sulla. The image of Alexander was meant to invoke memories of Greek military prowess and dominance - an inspiration to fight against Roman encroachment, but Mithradates was hardly the leader Alexander was. Design: Diademed head of Alexander the Great right, wearing Horn of Ammon / Athena seated left, holding Nike and resting elbow on shield Reference: Callatay p. 140, D6. AMNG I 260. HGC 3.2, 1824. Dimensions: 19 mm / 8.25 gm Condition: Choice XF; struck from a worn obverse die. Alexander the Great Perhaps no man has ever captured the human imagination for adventure, bravery, and glory more than Alexander the Great, the vigorous Macedonian king that set out to conquer the known world and succeeded by age 30. He was immortalized in life as the great conqueror of the East and in death through histories and mythology that stretched across disparate cultures, from Greece and Rome to Ethiopia, the Islamic world, India, and more. Each culture adapted their Alexander myth to their own present framework; for example, the Alexander of Ethiopian legend (probably written about the 10th century AD) features a deeply pious Christian king who engages in the same conquests but with a distinctly Christian, almost crusade-like flare. It didn’t seem to matter to the author, or their audience, that Alexander lived 300 years before Christ – his memory and aura were so powerful that he was the perfect man to become a cultural archetype. Alexander certainly had big shoes to fill. His father, Philip of Macedon, had transformed his small backwater of a northern semi-Greek kingdom into the preeminent Hellenic state, uniting all of Greece under his hegemony with victory in the 338 BC Battle of Chaeronea, in which Alexander (aged 18) took part. His father ensured that his son received the finest education; he was tutored by none other than Aristotle. Alexander would carry his annotated copy of the Iliad, which he had read and discussed with Aristotle, on all his campaigns. Philip was assassinated under mysterious circumstances in 336 BC while planning an invasion of the Persian Empire, the gargantuan state that stretched from the Aegean to the Indus that had been the perennial nemesis of the Greek-speaking world. Alexander took up his father’s cause with gusto, swiftly winning decisive victories against armies three to four times his own’s size at Granicus (334 BC), Issus (333 BC), and Guagamela (331 BC) that secured for him the entire Persian Empire. At Guagamela in eastern Syria, the most remarkable and important victory of his career, Alexander’s 47,000 men crushed a Persian army of 200,000 strong (ancient estimates, likely exaggerated, suggest the Persian army numbered half a million). The three victories secured for him the entire Near East; his dramatic entries into Egypt and Babylon captivated those at the time and countless later generations of writers and artists. Following the conquest of Babylon, Alexander moved east into Persia proper, acquiring the great royal treasury at Persepolis. As the 1st century historian Diodorus Siculus tells us, he “seized all the treasures in the citadel, a vast quantity of gold and silver from the royal treasuries that had been collected and laid up since the time of Cyrus… he ordered thousands of mules and camels to convey all this treasure.” The exact numbers are surmised to be 10,000 mules and 500 camels. The Macedonians seized over 3,000 tons of gold and silver – one of the largest seizures of wealth in human history – and used it to mint millions of gold staters and silver tetradrachms and drachms. It is more likely than not that any lifetime issue gold or silver coins of Alexander were minted with the loot taken from the mighty Persian capital, which was used to mint the great amounts of coinage emanating from the mints of Amphipolis, Babylon, and Tarsus, among others. As the king moved further east, he continued to win every single battle and conquer more territory, stretching his domain beyond the Indus River. But problems began to emerge; Alexander’s victories became more difficult and costly, particularly his clashes with the Indian king Porus (326 BC), who was supported by dozens of fearsome war elephants. Alexander’s own mental state also was deteriorating; he killed his best friend Cleitus in a fit of rage, and his alcoholism worsened. Though he finally decided to halt when faced with a mutiny in India (324 BC), he was never defeated in battle. His greatest military mistake was logistical – choosing to march his army weary from ten years of war through the Baluchistan desert of southern Iran proved enormously costly in terms of men and materiel. He died at the age of 33 in Babylon the following year (323 BC) without any clear succession plan. His generals fought over his vast dominion for the next two decades, with a stable settlement only achieved by 301 BC.
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