| Numismatica Ars Classica > Auction 149 | Auction date: 2 December 2024 |
| Lot number: 169 Price realized: 900 CHF (Approx. 1,014 USD / 968 EUR) Note: Prices do not include buyer's fees. | Show similar lots on CoinArchives Find similar lots in upcoming auctions on  |
| Lot description: Antiochus IV Epiphanes, 175 – 164 Tetradrachm, Antiochia on the Orontes circa 168-164, AR 30 mm, 16.77 g. Diademed head of Antiochus IV r. Fillet border. Rev. BAΣIΛEΩΣ – ANTIOXOY ΘEOY – EΠIΦANOYΣ – NIKHΦOPOY Zeus seated l., holding Nike with wreath in r. hand and sceptre in l. SC –. An apparently unique and unrecorded variety with ANTIOXOY followed by ΘEOY on the same line and NIKHΦOPOY not in exergue. Edge chipped at one o'clock on obverse, otherwise very fine Ex Oslo Myntgalleri sale 21, 2020, 262. Although he was named Mithradates at birth, the third son of Antiochus III appears to have assumed the Seleucid dynastic name of Antiochus (IV) by the time he was sent to Rome as a hostage under the terms of the Peace of Apamea in 188 BC. Antiochus was released and replaced as a Roman hostage by his nephew Demetrius (I) in 176 BC, and briefly stayed in Athens as he slowly made his way back to Syria. He increased his eastern progress when he learned that his brother, Seleucus IV had been murdered by Heliodorus in 175 BC. At Pergamum, he was hailed as the legitimate Seleucid king by Eumenes II and provided with an army to win back the Syrian kingdom. Antiochus IV easily entered Antioch and removed Heliodorus, while adopting the infant son of Seleucus IV and apparently marrying his mother. He seems to have reigned as king alongside the boy until 170 BC, when the birth of his own heir, the future Antiochus V Eupator, caused him to order the child's death. When Ptolemy VI Philometor undertook an unwise campaign to reclaim Coele Syria and Phoenicia from Seleucid control in 170 BC, Antiochus IV defeated him at the border and then took the opportunity to invade Egypt. He was so successful that Antiochus IV soon controlled most of the Ptolemaic kingdom except for Alexandria and established a new capital at Memphis. Under these circumstances, the Alexandrians rejected Ptolemy VI and acclaimed Ptolemy VIII Euergetes as their king, while in a strange twist, Antiochus IV recognized the ousted Ptolemy VI in the hope of using him as his puppet. Unfortunately for the Seleucid domination of Egypt, while Antiochus IV was back in Syria in late 169 BC, Ptolemy VI and Ptolemy VIII reconciled with one another. The Seleucid king responded by mounting a second invasion of Egypt the following year, during which he is thought to have had himself crowned pharaoh in Memphis before marching on Alexandria. However, before he could begin what was sure to be a determined siege of the city, he was met in the suburb of Eleusis by the Roman legate C. Popillius Laenus. Laenas famously drew a line in the sand and warned Antiochus IV that if he crossed it he would be risking war with Rome. Knowing that he would almost surely lose such a conflict, the king did not cross the line and instead returned to his own kingdom in humiliation. Stung by the failed Egyptian adventure, Antiochus IV was in no mood for the ongoing conflicts between Hellenizing and traditionalist Jewish factions in Jerusalem-a problem he had actually created earlier by his deposition and installation of high priests based on bribery and exacerbated between the Egyptian campaigns by plundering the Temple and massacring political opponents. In 167 BC, the king undertook a full-scale invasion of Judaea that saw the sacking of Jerusalem, the installation of a garrison, and, most repellent of all, the prohibition of Jewish religious observances and the defiling of the Temple with the sacrifice of swine to Olympian Zeus. By the following year these extreme acts had sparked the outbreak of the Maccabean Revolt, which fought against Seleucid authority in Judaea for the remainder of Antiochus' reign and through those of his successors for decades until the creation of an autonomous Jewish state under the leadership of the Hasmonaean high priests. As the Maccabean Revolt was developing in 166 BC, Antiochus IV hosted a grand festival and procession in the Antiochene suburb of Daphne to display his wealth and military might to the Greek world, lest it may have gotten the wrong impression from the embarrassing conclusion to his interventions in Egypt. Then, in 165 BC, the king departed with an army into the Upper Satrapies to restore Armenia to Seleucid control and to push back the Parthians, who had begun to move westwards, swallowing up the satrapy of Hyrcania. He did not survive to face the Parthian menace. In 164 BC, Antiochus IV attempted to plunder the wealth of the temple of the indigenous goddess Nanaia in Elymais, but he and his men were driven off by the Elymaeans. Then, as they marched from Elymais to the Median capital at Ecbatana, the king suddenly fell ill and died. The ancient literary sources, which are largely hostile to the king, attribute his death to divine wrath, either invoked by his impious assault on the Elymaean temple or by his earlier abuses to Jerusalem and the Jewish Temple. Estimate: 750 CHF |  |
