Seleucid Coinage

Seleucid coinage was the money struck by the Seleucid kings, the Macedonian dynasty founded by Seleucus I Nicator that ruled much of western Asia after the death of Alexander the Great. From the late fourth century BCE until Rome turned Syria into a province in the 60s BCE, the dynasty issued silver, gold and bronze coins from a chain of mints stretching from the Mediterranean coast to Iran and Central Asia.

Struck mainly on the Attic weight standard inherited from Alexander, Seleucid silver gave a vast and varied territory a shared form of money. Its royal portraits, recurring dynastic images and, in later issues, printed dates make it one of the most closely studied coinages of the Hellenistic world.

Seleucus regained control of Babylon in 312 BCE, the event from which the Seleucid era was counted. This continuous year count was used to date documents across the kingdom and, from the second century BCE, appeared on many coins as well. The first mints under his control kept Alexander's familiar designs: the head of Heracles wearing a lion skin on the front and an enthroned Zeus on the back of the silver tetradrachm.

After Seleucus took the royal title around 305 BCE, new images gradually joined the Alexander types. They included horned horses, elephants, anchors and a helmeted head usually identified as the king himself, all reflecting a rule built on military success. Seleucus also founded new cities, among them Antioch on the Orontes and Seleucia on the Tigris, which grew into the kingdom's leading mints. Other workshops operated at places such as Susa, Ecbatana and Ai Khanoum in Bactria.

The workhorse of the system was the silver tetradrachm, a four-drachm coin of roughly 17 grams, struck to the same standard as the Attic drachma. Drachms and smaller silver fractions down to the obol, one-sixth of a drachm, were also produced, although the larger pieces dominate surviving hoards. Large sums were reckoned in the traditional units of account: 100 drachms made a mina and 60 minae a talent.

Gold was struck more sparingly, chiefly as staters on the model of Alexander's and Philip II's Macedonian stater, and some large gold pieces were made for special occasions. Gold and silver therefore circulated side by side, a form of bimetallism without a fixed legal ratio. Everyday purchases relied on a large bronze coinage, including small change such as the chalkous, produced at many royal and, later, civic mints.

Under Antiochus I, the son of Seleucus, the reverse type of Apollo seated on the omphalos, the sacred stone of Delphi, became the dynasty's signature image and remained in use for well over a century. The front of each coin carried the portrait of the reigning king, and these portraits were individual enough for scholars to trace rulers' ages and changes of style.

Later kings experimented with new types and titles. Antiochus IV Epiphanes, for example, used a seated Zeus holding a figure of Victory and added honorific epithets to the royal legend. In the second century BCE many cities were also allowed to strike their own bronze coins, a sign of both royal favour and weakening central control.

From the mid-third century BCE the eastern provinces drifted away. Bactria became an independent Greek kingdom, and the Parthians, whose own Parthian drachm grew out of Hellenistic models, steadily took over Iran and Mesopotamia. After defeat by Rome, the Treaty of Apamea in 188 BCE cost the kingdom most of Asia Minor.

In the west, the Seleucids won the Phoenician coast from the Ptolemies around 200 BCE. Mints such as Tyre and Sidon kept striking silver on the lighter weight used in Ptolemaic coinage, so two standards ran side by side within one kingdom. Tyre gained autonomy in the late second century BCE and began the long series of the Tyrian shekel.

Civil wars between rival claimants marked the final decades, with many short reigns and coinage of uneven quality. Pompey annexed Syria for Rome in 64–63 BCE. Roman officials continued to strike tetradrachms in the name of one of the last kings, Philip I Philadelphus, for some years, before the Roman denarius and provincial coinage took over.

Seleucid coins set the visual and metrological pattern for many successor states. Rulers of Characene at the head of the Persian Gulf copied Seleucid tetradrachms, and the Nabataean king Aretas III struck Seleucid-style coins when he held Damascus (see Nabataean coinage). Today the series is catalogued in detail by modern numismatic research, which uses mint marks, monograms and dates to reconstruct the kingdom's administration and finances.

• Seleucid Coins Online – American Numismatic Society
• British Museum – Collection online