Drachm - Darayan I

Persis was not a successor state in any conventional sense — it survived as a semi-autonomous region under Seleucid overlordship by presenting itself as the custodian of Achaemenid religious tradition, which is precisely why its coinage is so historically loaded. Darayan I, the name itself a Middle Persian rendering of Darius, was among the early frataraka rulers who leveraged that Achaemenid nostalgia into genuine regional authority during the fracturing of Seleucid power in the second century.

The Haerinck and Overlaet excavations at Persepolis and surrounding sites have confirmed sustained priestly-dynastic activity through this period, lending physical archaeological weight to what the coins already suggested.