THRACIAN KINGDOM, Lysimachos, 323-281 BC, bronze minor

DescriptionThrace had been part of the empire of Alexander the Great. When Alexander died suddenly the top generals (diadochi) divided the Empire between them, eventually becoming kings of their domains. Thrace went to Lysimachos. The Macedonian succession was all war. Lysimachos everntually stabilized his rule. He expanded into western Asia Minor (Anatolia), and then into northern Macedonia. His son was involved in a plot against him, and Lysimachos had him killed. That caused a rebellion, the Seleukids intervened, and Lysimachos was killed in battle.Thrace is the land between the Balkan mountains and the Black Sea from northern Greece to southern Bulgaria and European Turkey. The ancient Thracians are thought to have been indigenous, meaning, I suppose, that they were there at least as far back as the neolithic period, before the invention of history. The ancient and extinct Thracian language is “generally agreed” to be Indo-European, which is supposed to mean that they came from somewhere else. During the early coin period the coins of Thrace were mostly made by Greek colonists.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.