From the collections of Martine-Marie-Pol de Béhague, Countess of Béarn, and H. Montagu, sold in 1896
Los 115
KINGS OF MACEDON. Alexander I, 498-454 BC. Tetradrachm (Silver, 25 mm, 13.39 g, 3 h), circa 460-454. Horseman, wearing petasos and chlamys, riding horse to right, holding reins in his right hand and two spears in his left. Rev. Forepart of a goat to right, head turned back to left; all within linear square within incuse square. BMFA 628 (same dies). Jameson 971 (same dies). Raymond 115a (this coin). SNG ANS 33. Rare. A beautiful example of this difficult issue with a superb pedigree. Two very minor old scrapes on the obverse and with a light die shift on the reverse, otherwise, very fine.


From the Kleinkunst Collection, ex Leu 72, 12 May 1998, 173, from the collection of Martine-Marie-Pol de Béhague, Countess of Béarn (1870-1939), Vinchon 14 April 1984, 97, ex Sotheby's, 1937, 34, and from the collection of H. Montagu, Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, 23 March 1896, 208.


Influenced by the longstanding hostilities between the Macedonian Kings and Athens in the late 5th and 4th centuries, Greek commentators often stressed the alleged barbarism of the Macedonians, who lived in and around the Macedonian plain in Northern Greece and spoke a related Greek dialect. The earliest references to the Macedonian Kingdom, however, come from Herodotus, from whom we learn that the claim of Alexander I to be a descendant of Herakles and the Argives was accepted by a court of Elean hellanodikai possibly as early as 504 BC, which allowed him to participate (and win), as a Greek, in the Panhellenic Olympic Games. Alexander's father Amyntas I had been a vassal of the Persians since the advance of Dareios I to Europe in 512/1 BC, and his son and successor carefully maneuvered between the superpower Persia and the Greek city states in the South. The accounts given by Herodotus on his actions are rather confusing, but it appears that Alexander, while formally fulfilling his duties as a Persian vassal, secretly sided with the Greeks on several occasions, providing them with valuable information about the Persian's plans and movements - although it is unclear to what extent these stories are later extenuations. In 479 BC, Alexander personally spoke as an ambassador of the Persian commander Mardonius to the Athenians to win them over to the Great King's side, but he openly defected to the Greeks after Pausanias' resounding victory at Plataia and defeated the remaining Persian forces at the Strymon river during their retreat to Thrace. Little is known about Alexander's activities after the Persian invasion of 480/79 BC, but Herodotus mentions, en passant, that a gold statue of the Macedonian King was standing in Delphi in his day (Hdt. 8.121), which undoubtedly boasted Alexander's role in the defeat of the Persian invaders in front of a Panhellenic audience at a time when Medismos had long become a serious political accusation. It is likely that Alexander expanded the boundaries of his realm following the retreat of the Persians, and he also became the first Macedonian King to strike his own coinage.
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