Griekse munten - Alexander the great Lifetime issue, unlisted! (JUN25123)

MACEDONIAN KINGDOM. Alexander III the Great (336-323 BC). AR tetradrachm (26 mm, 16.83 gm). VF, Fine Style. Lifetime issue of 'Babylon', ca. 325-323 BC. Head of Heracles right, wearing lion skin headdress, paws tied before neck / AΛEΞANΔPOY-BAΣIΛEΩΣ, Zeus enthroned left, left leg drawn back, feet on stool, eagle in right hand, scepter in left; bee upward above M in left field, monogram in the form of a trident head below strut. Price -, cf. 3673-87 for series and 3619 for same without royal title, but unlisted for combination with royal title and bee in field.

The use of the word Basileus was distasteful to Greeks, given its connotations with eastern dictatorship. The royal title occurs on Alexander’s coinage only near the very end of his reign around 324 BC at Babylon, and in Southern Asia Minor and Phoenicia amongst issues which appear to have been designed to pay off veterans sent home in 324 BC; in Macedon it appears on posthumous coinage from about 320-317 BC.