Antiochos III earned the epithet "Megas" — the Great — largely on the strength of his anabaseis, his great eastern expedition of 212–205 BC that reasserted Seleucid authority across Bactria, Parthia, and into the Indian subcontinent. The tetradrachms struck in the years immediately following that campaign reflect a king at the height of his confidence. Within a decade he would overreach catastrophically, provoking Rome at Thermopylae and suffering the decisive defeat at Magnesia in 190 BC that stripped him of Asia Minor entirely.
SC 1.997 places this issue among the later mint attributions of his reign, a period of active western campaigning including the seizure of Coele-Syria from Ptolemaic control at the Battle of Panion, 200 BC.
Antiochos III earned the epithet "Megas" — the Great — largely on the strength of his anabaseis, his great eastern expedition of 212–205 BC that reasserted Seleucid authority across Bactria, Parthia, and into the Indian subcontinent. The tetradrachms struck in the years immediately following that campaign reflect a king at the height of his confidence. Within a decade he would overreach catastrophically, provoking Rome at Thermopylae and suffering the decisive defeat at Magnesia in 190 BC that stripped him of Asia Minor entirely.
SC 1.997 places this issue among the later mint attributions of his reign, a period of active western campaigning including the seizure of Coele-Syria from Ptolemaic control at the Battle of Panion, 200 BC.