Drachm Philip III Type

Philip III Arrhidaeus, the intellectually disabled half-brother of Alexander the Great, reigned as nominal king from 323 to 317 BC — a figurehead manipulated by competing diadochi until Olympias had him executed. Celtic tribes in the eastern Balkans and Carpathian basin began striking imitative drachms from Macedonian prototypes during his reign and continued producing them for two centuries, drifting progressively further from the original type with each successive die generation. By the later issues, the abstraction is so extreme that the prototype is almost unrecognizable without reference material.