SELEUKID Demetrios II second reign 129-125 BC bronze

DescriptionDemetrios (Demetrius) II was caught up in dynastic wars as a child and fled to Crete. Grown up, he raised an army and returned to do battle with then Seleukid King Alexander Balas. Eventually successful. He had governing problems that led to rebellions, fought with the Parthians, who captured him and held him hostage for about nine years. Returned to the throne, he scrapped with Ptolemaic Egypt, and there were more rebellions and conflict with a claimant, Alexander II, who eventually killed him and became King.The Seleukid kingdom came into being when Seleukos, a general of Alexander the Great, being in Mesopotamia at the time, just kept it, and went to war with his fellow generals to establish the zones of influence. The Seleukids hung on for a couple of centuries.The big change that Alexander the Great brought about was the union of the Greek spirit of inquiry with the methods of imperial bureaucracy.Ancient Coins includes Greek and Roman coins and those of neighbors and successors, geographically from Morocco and Spain all the way to Afghanistan. Date ranges for these begin with the world’s earliest coins of the 8th century BC to, in an extreme case, the end of Byzantine Empire, 1453 AD.