SILVER TETRADRACHM OF THE GREEK KING SELEUCUS I NICATOR

 

Silver Tetradrachm of the Greek King Seleucus I . 312-280.  Obv. Bridled horsehead looking right, with horns. Rev. ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΣΕΛΕΥΚΟΥ ( of King Seleucus )  Elephant walking right and monograms below it. 

This tetradrachm is an emblematic issue of Seleucus I, the founder of the Seleucid dynasty, whose Kingdom extended from Thrace and Asia Minor in the West to Bactria in the East and from the Black Sea in the north to the borders of Egypt in the South at its peak. Seleucus was essentialy the only Successor of Alexander the Great who came closest to restoring the entirety of the Macedonian Empire, and this coin gives us an idea of how he achieved to create such a vast Kingdom. 

The obverse type depicts the head of a magnificent horse adorned with the horns of a bull. Ioannis Malalas, a Syrian chronicler of the byzantine times, tells us that in his day (the late 5th-early 6th centuries CE) there was still a statue in Antioch erected by Seleucus, depicting a horned horse. Seleucus commissioned this statue to honour his own steed who had saved him from destruction at the hands of Antigonos Monophthalmos in 315 BCE. Although Seleucus had been appointed satrap of Babylonia by an assembly of Alexander's former generals in 321 BCE, Antigonos, who was made strategos of Asia at the same time sought to remove the satraps that he could not control and thereby become the new master of Alexander's Empire. Realizing the danger, Seleucus took to his horse and escaped from Babylon to the Egyptian court of Ptolemy. With Ptolemy's assistance, Seleucus was able to return to Babylon-again on his horse-and reclaim his satrapy in 312 BCE.

 In 306/5 BCE,  he embarked upon an eastern campaign to gain control of the Upper Satrapies. However, the real benefit of this campaign was a peace treaty made with the Mauryan Emperor Chandragupta that involved the gift of 500 elephants. Elephants, such as the majestic creature depicted on the reverse of the tetradrachm, were the equivalent to the tank of the ancient Greek world, capable of great destruction and inspiring fear in infantry and cavalry alike ranged against them. 

Like the horse of the obverse, the elephants of Chandragupta had a pivotal role to play in Seleucus' reign. Thanks to their timely arrival at the Battle of Ipsos (301 BCE), it was possible for Seleucus and his allies to defeat and kill Antigonos, thereby ending an ever-present threat. With Antigonos gone, Seleucus could safely rule his eastern Kingdom. The tetradrachm itself gives us the end of the story. It was struck at Pergamon for Seleucus by a local dynast named Philetairos-the founder of the later Attalid dynasty. In 281 BCE, the year the coin was issued, Philetairos and other cities and rulers of western Asia Minor invited Seleucus to march west and destroy his sometime ally, Lysimachos, who had made himself very unpopular in the region. Seleucus accepted, and he defeated and killed Lysimacus at the Battle of Korupedion. This victory gained for Seleucus all of Lysimacus' former territory in Asia Minor and Thrace, but he did not have the chance to enjoy this new victory. Later in the year, as he marched through Thrace, Seleucus was murdered by a refugee from the Ptolemaic court. His name and legacy, however, remain immortal .