Tetradrachm - Seleukos II Kallinikos Sardes

Seleukos II inherited a fractured empire. His reign opened with the Third Syrian War — Ptolemy III drove deep into Seleucid territory, sacking Antioch and briefly reaching as far as Babylon — and never fully stabilized. A simultaneous revolt by his own brother Antiochos Hierax in Asia Minor split the western half of the empire for much of the 240s and 230s BC, forcing Seleukos to fight on two fronts he could not both win.

Sardes was one of the key western mints operating under contested authority during the Hierax conflict. SC 652 places this issue within a complex sequence at that mint tied directly to the political turbulence of the fraternal war.