Archepolis, son of Themistocles, governed Magnesia ad Meandrum in the 460s BC after his father accepted the Persian grant of the city — along with Myus and Lampsacus — from Artaxerxes I. These tiny fractional issues bearing his name are among the very few Greek civic coins to carry the name of a ruling dynast rather than the city alone, a direct reflection of the quasi-tyrannical authority the Themistoclid family exercised there. Archepolis is otherwise a marginal figure in the ancient sources; the coins are essentially his only surviving historical footprint.
Archepolis, son of Themistocles, governed Magnesia ad Meandrum in the 460s BC after his father accepted the Persian grant of the city — along with Myus and Lampsacus — from Artaxerxes I. These tiny fractional issues bearing his name are among the very few Greek civic coins to carry the name of a ruling dynast rather than the city alone, a direct reflection of the quasi-tyrannical authority the Themistoclid family exercised there. Archepolis is otherwise a marginal figure in the ancient sources; the coins are essentially his only surviving historical footprint.