Tetradrachm - Demetrios I Soter Soloi

Demetrios I came to power not through dynastic succession but by escaping from Rome, where he had been held as a political hostage since childhood. He slipped away in 162 BC, landed in Syria, and seized the throne by executing the regent Lysias and the child-king Antiochus V. The Soloi mint in Cilicia struck for him during the final years of his reign — a period under sustained pressure from rival claimants backed by Rome, which had never formally recognized his rule.

He was killed in 150 BC when Alexander Balas, almost certainly a pretender of no actual Seleucid blood, defeated him in battle with Roman and Ptolemaic backing.