Gold Stater - Belgae Para Chute

The "Para Chute" type takes its name from the fragmentary Greek inscription it carries — a degraded remnant of the PHILIPPOS legend originally found on the gold staters of Philip II of Macedon, whose coins flooded into Celtic Europe through mercenary payments and trade during the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. By the time Atrebatic craftsmen were producing this variety, the inscription had been abstracted almost beyond recognition through generations of copying, retaining just enough letterforms to be identifiable as its distant source. The Atrebates, then occupying territory across both sides of the Channel, were among the more politically sophisticated of the southern British tribes, with documented contact with Rome in the decades immediately preceding Caesar's expeditions of 55 and 54 BC.