Demetrios I Aniketos, 200-180 BC, Tetradrachm

Demetrios I Aniketos, tetradrachm, AR, c. 200–180 BC; 16.23 g; 31 mm. Uncertain mint, Bopearachchi “Mint B.” Obverse: Diademed and draped bust of the king right, wearing an elephant-skin headdress. Reverse: BAΣIΛEΩΣ ΔHMHTPIOY; Herakles standing left, crowning himself with right hand and holding club and lion skin in left. Struck on a broad flan, well centered with full legend and clear devices. Bopearachchi 1C (Mint B); Mitchiner 103d.

Demetrios I, son of Euthydemos I, led the Greco‑Bactrian expansion into northwestern India in the early 2nd century BC. The elephant‑skin headdress is associated in scholarship with his Indian campaigns and the epithet Aniketos (“Invincible”), while the Heraklean victory type follows Hellenistic royal iconography established since Alexander. Attic‑standard silver issues like this served cross‑border circulation between Bactria and the northwestern Indian regions and formed a basis for later Indo‑Greek coinage.