KINGS of MACEDON. Philip III Arrhidaios, 323 – 317 BC. AR Tetradrachm

KINGS of MACEDON. Philip III Arrhidaios, 323 – 317 BC. AR Tetradrachm (27 mm, 17.15 g, 2 h). Miletos mint. Issued in the name and with the types of Alexander III. Obv. Head of Herakles right, wearing lion-skin headdress; dotted border. Rev. ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΥ – Zeus Aëtophoros seated left on backless throne, legs crossed, holding eagle on outstretched right hand and long sceptre in left; grain ear in left field; linear ground line. Price 2099b (legs crossed variety); ADM I, Series III, 137e (these dies); ANS inv. 1944.100.31875 (same dies).

When Alexander died in Babylon (323 BC), his half-brother Arrhidaios—mentally impaired and a mere pawn of the generals—was elevated to the throne. The empire’s regents, beginning with Perdiccas and soon after Antipater, continued the massive silver tetradrachm output in Alexander’s name to fund rival armies and maintain the fiction of dynastic continuity.

Miletos, one of the three great mints of western Asia Minor (with Sardes and Kolophon), struck this series in silver captured from Persian treasuries. The unmistakable Miletian identifier is the grain-ear symbol in the left field, alluding both to the city’s fertile Maeander plain and to Demeter’s cult that assured its prosperity.

The crossed-leg pose of Zeus is more than an engraver’s whim. It reflects an Ionian artistic convention that conveys a relaxed authority—contrasting with the “imperial” parallel-leg style preferred at the Macedonian core mints. Modern die-study shows the crossed-leg sub-series was brief, likely struck late in 323 BC during Perdiccas’ regency, before political turmoil forced rapid stylistic simplification. Surviving examples are consequently scarcer than their parallel-leg counterparts and serve as a diagnostic snapshot of the empire’s first, fragile months after Alexander’s death.

High-grade tetradrachms such as the present coin illustrate how the Alexandrine standard became the reserve currency of the Mediterranean. Their uniform weight and purity underwrote trade from Egypt to Afghanistan for more than a century, and their iconography—Herakles as conquering hero, Zeus as divine guarantor—cemented Alexander’s posthumous cult. This piece, struck at a key Ionian port and preserved in exceptional state, makes tangible both the reach of Alexander’s monetary reforms and the uncertainty that shadowed his successors.