Drachm - Philip III In the name of Alexander III; Colophon

Philip III Arrhidaeus was Alexander's half-brother, likely intellectually disabled from birth or from a poisoning attempt in childhood, and was installed as king by the Macedonian infantry in the chaotic hours following Alexander's death in 323 BC — a compromise candidate controlled entirely by the generals around him. Coins struck in his name continued using Alexander's types, a deliberate political choice to project continuity of the empire rather than acknowledge the fragile regency holding it together.

The Colophon mint in Ionia was active through the early Diadochi period before control of the region became contested. Müller 330 places this among the issues attributable to that mint by magistrate marks and die links established in the 19th-century corpus.