Tetradrachm - Demetrios I Soter Antioch

Demetrios I came to power not through inheritance but through escape — he had been held as a political hostage in Rome since childhood and slipped away in 162 BC against the Senate's wishes, landing in Syria and seizing the throne from the regent Lysias and the boy-king Antiochus V. The Senate initially refused to recognize him, a diplomatic friction that colored the early years of his reign.

His epithet Soter, "Savior," was earned by suppressing the Maccabean revolt's most dangerous phase and eliminating the general Nicanor in 161 BC — though Judean sources remember him considerably less favorably.