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Tetradrachm In the name of Alexander III
| Issuer | Mesembria (Thrace) |
|---|---|
| Year | 250 BC - 175 BC |
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| Orientation | Variable alignment ↺ |
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| Obverse description | Right-facing heroic effigy of Heracles, portrayed with youthful idealized features and flowing, elaborately rendered hair. The head is covered with the Nemean lion's scalp, the open jaws framing the crown of the head and the paws knotted at the throat, a hallmark of the Alexander III coinage type. The portrait is executed in high relief with finely detailed musculature at the neck and sensitively modeled facial features characteristic of the Hellenistic artistic tradition. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse lettering | BAΣIΛEΩΣ AΛEΞANΔΡOΥ |
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| Additional information |
Mesembria's Alexander-type tetradrachms were struck well after the conqueror's death in 323 BC, a practice common among Greek cities exploiting the commercial familiarity of his coinage across eastern Mediterranean trade networks. The city sat on a Black Sea peninsula — virtually an island — making it a natural waypoint for grain and slave traffic moving between the Pontic steppe and the Aegean. Topalov's classification work on this series remains the primary reference precisely because the fabric and die execution of Mesembrian issues diverge enough from Macedonian prototypes to warrant their own taxonomy.