Tetradrachm - Alexander I Balas Antioch on the Orontes

Alexander I Balas seized the Seleucid throne by claiming to be a son of Antiochus IV Epiphanes — a claim almost certainly fabricated, and one that Rome chose to endorse anyway, since backing a pretender was cheaper than fighting Demetrius I Soter directly. The gambit worked: Demetrius died in battle in 150 BC, the precise year this coin was struck at Antioch.

His reign lasted only until 145 BC, when he was deposed and killed after a disastrous military defeat against Ptolemy VI. The Antioch mint was among the most active in the Hellenistic world, and tetradrachms of Balas survive in reasonable numbers — but the political chaos that defined his rule makes precise die-sequence attribution, as attempted in SC 1781, unusually complex.