Ancients: MACEDONIAN KINGDOM. Alexander I (ca. 498-454 BC). AR octodrachm (34mm, 28.75 gm). NGC Choice XF★ 5/5 - 4/5....

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Star Broad-Flan Octodrachm

MACEDONIAN KINGDOM. Alexander I (ca. 498-454 BC). AR octodrachm (34mm, 28.75 gm). NGC Choice XF★ 5/5 - 4/5. Ca. 492-480/79 BC. Bridled horse prancing right, nude warrior 'Ares' standing right on his far side, shoulders facing, wearing causia or petasus, two transverse spears in right hand; thick dotted border / Shallow, stippled, quadripartite incuse square. SNG ANS 1. Rosen 117 (Bisaltae). SNG Lockett 1266. Boldly struck from fresh dies, on a broad, massive flan.

Plate Coin #49 in the "100 Greatest Ancient Coins" book by Harlan Berk

Although previously attributed as a tribal issue of the Bisaltai, one of the powerful Thraco-Macedonian tribes that struck coinage in the late 6th and early 5th centuries, recent scholarship assigns it to Alexander I, king of Macedon during the Greco-Persian wars of 492-479 BC. Alexander was painted as a rather double-dealing character by the historian Herodotus. When Persian envoys arrived in 492 BC to ask for Macedon's submission, Alexander ordered their arrest and execution. He spent several years enlisting the support of the tribal regions of Thrace and Macedon in a guerrilla campaign against the Persians; this was likely the era in which this coin was struck on a weight standard also used by the allied Bisaltai. The huge invasion of Greece launched by Xerxes in 480 BC forced Alexander to submit to Persian rule; however, while supposedly acting as a mediator between the Persians and the other Greek states, he secretly plotted against his overlords and gave the allied Greek army critical intelligence prior to the battle of Plataea in 479 BC that helped them secure a resounding victory. When the surviving Persian soldiers passed through Macedon, Alexander attacked them near the river Strymon and massacred most of the 43,000-man host.

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