Oktadrachm - Alexander I

Alexander I of Macedon spent much of his reign navigating between Persian imperial pressure and the growing power of the southern Greek city-states. His heavy silver coinage — produced at a scale unusual for a northern kingdom at this date — almost certainly reflects control of the timber and silver mines of the Mount Dysoron region, resources explicitly noted by Thucydides. The octadrachm denomination itself was peculiar to the northern Aegean and never took hold further south.

Alexander had earlier served the Persians as a nominal vassal during Xerxes' invasion, a status later Greeks found uncomfortable enough that he sought — and obtained — recognition as ethnically Hellenic to compete at Olympia.