Greek settlements in the Asia Minor were the product of Greek population pressure induced migrations of the 10th-6th centuries BC. The Greeks were as fertile than rabbits and it required the development of serious internecine warfare from the 6th century BC to continuously cull populations, sufficient to reduce population pressure as a driver of colonization. By the 6th century the Greeks in the east found themselves on the western frontier of the expansionary Persian Empire and were soon subsumed by it. This became the basis of a struggle for imperium between variously the Persians and the Athenians, the Spartans, the Macedonians and eventually the Romans.

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The mint at Babylon, the largest and one of the oldest cities of the agent world, operated for a brief period of about twenty-five years following the surrender of the city to Alexander the Great in October 331 BC. This produced a high volume of coinage, dominated by the output Alexandrine tetradrachm emissions and lesser quantities of the Persian inspired Babylonian lion staters. Smaller silver denominations, gold double darics and gold Alexandrine staters were produced in more limited quantities until the closure of the mint around 305 BC. Babylon fell into a terminal decline over the following few centuries. Little remains of what was once the largest city of the ancient world. Its surviving coinage encompasses a brief period of ttwenty five years, which includes the zenith of Alexander’s power; his death in Babylon and the early struggles amongst his would be successors.

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"Probably in battle, that arbiter of so much in Hellenistic civilization, the thunder of the Diodotid Zeus fell silent forever on the Bactrian frontier." Frank Lee Holt: Thundering Zeus.

Little more than a few score lines of the ancient texts refer to Baktria in the period between the conquests of Alexander III the Great in 329-327 BC and the fall of the region to Scythian invaders around 145 BC. Yet this was the easternmost outpost of Greek civilization for two centuries after Alexander the Great. As a result, the history of the Greeks in Baktria is largely written from the ancient coinage produced in the region north of the Hindu Kush and south of the Amu Darya (the ancient Oxus River). The following collection explores that history, one that proved to be a microcosm of the Hellenistic world.

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Carthage, the capital of Zeugitana, was located on the coast of modern day Tunis. Phoenician colonists from Tyre established the city in the eighth century BC. From the sixth to the third centuries BC it came to dominate maritime trade in the western Mediterranean. Its economic success brought it into conflict with an emerging Rome resulting in the First Punic War in 264 BC. The struggle continued intermittently for more than a century, eventually resulting in the total destruction of Carthage in 146 BC at the end of the Third Punic War.

In the Second Punic War 218-201 BC Carthaginian forces under Hannibal took the war to Rome’s doorstep and came within a hair’s breadth of of conquering the Romans in 216 BC, before the tide of war turned gradually under the superior economic strength of Rome. Hannibal was defeated eventually on Carthaginian soil by Scipio Africanus at Zama in 202 BC, after which the former sued for peace. Most of the following Punic coins are from the time of this epic conflict.

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The Seleukid Empire was one of the three successor states to the Macedonian empire forged by Alexander III 'the Great'. Following Alexander's death, his greatest generals, the diadochi, divided the empire among themselves, but the settlement was not enduring and nearly constant warfare resulted from their ambitions to widen their respective areas of control. Seleukos I, despite being passed over in the initial settlement in 323 BC, received the satrapy of Babylon in the second settlement in 320 BC. By the time of his death in 281 BC, Seleukos had expanded his realm to encompass most of Alexander's eastern possessions from Asia Minor to Baktria. Seleukos continued to strike coins in the name of Alexander, although he opened a number of new mints to serve his various campaigns and his growing empire. After assuming the royal title in 305 BC, Seleukos began issuing coinage in his own name, and introduced a variety of new types that propagated a mythology of his new dynasty and celebrated his considerable accomplishments.

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Commencing in the 8th century BC population pressures in the Greek city-states resulted in emigration and the establishment of Greek cities throughout the Mediterranean, but particularly in Sicily and southern Italy, otherwise known as Magna Graecia.

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The Peloponnesos is the mountainous land forming the southwest portion of Greece. It is separated from the main body of Greece by the narrow Isthmus of Corinth, flanked to the north by the Gulf of Corinth and the east and south by the Aegean Sea. It was the location of many decisive battles and military campaigns that determined the direction of Greek history over a millennium.

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Following the Battle of Issos in 333 BC, Alexander the Great extended Greek influence beyond Asia Minor into the Persian realm to the east, as far as modern day Pakistan. His conquests were complete by 324 BC and a legacy of Greek influence remained in the east for the next three centuries.

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Northern Greece was a region of shifting allegiances and the origin of the Macedonian Empire. Located at the edge of Europe it was the gateway to Greece from the East and thus a crossroads for the fusion of Greek and Eastern culture. It was the location of many of the conflicts involving Greeks states.

Central Greece was a region of continuously shifting allegiances, full of belligerents the egos of whom continuously resulted in friction with the adjacent neighbors, a microcosm of Greek culture and dysfunction through time. Simultaneously it was home to the high point of Greek architecture and art (Classical Athens) and the dancing ground Ares, of the god of war (the plain of Plataea), at the cross roads in and out of Greece.

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