MAKEDONIAN KINGDOM, Demetrios Poliorketes, 294-288 BC, bronze

DescriptionPoliorketes means “besieger” from his innovative efforts to take a walled city. He fought with his contemporaries all the time. That was the ancient world at that moment. War of all against all.The independent cities of Macedonia were gathered together under the Argead kings. The kingdom became a Persian vassal for a while, Later kings fought with Athens. Normal familial succession wars ensued until the advent of Philip II who made large gains of territory and influence in Greece and was preparing to invade Persia when he was assassinated by one of his soldiers. His son Alexander the Great did the job and then some. After Alexander died his empire split in pieces. Macedon fought with itself until conquered by Rome.The big change that Alexander the Great brought about was the union of the Greek spirit of inquiry with the methods of the Persian imperial bureaucracy. The standardization of coinage from Eastern Europe to Pakistan was part of the evolution of larger organizations of people.“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.