Zeus Keraunophoros at Sidon

The Coin and Its Date

In the year SE 165 [148/7 BC] Demetrius the Second, the son of Demetrius the First, left Crete and arrived in Syria, the land of his ancestors. When King Alexander heard about this, he was worried and returned to Antioch, the capital of Syria.
-1 Maccabees 10:67-68

Seleukid Kingdom, Phoenicia, Sidon, Alexander I Balas (King, 152–145 BC), AR Tetradrachm (16.76 g, 31 mm), dated SE 165 (148/7 BC).

Obv: Diademed head of Alexander I right.

Rev: ΘΕΟΠΑΤΟΡΟΣ ΕΥΕΡΓΕΤΟΥ, Zeus Keraunophoros enthroned left, holding thunderbolt in extended right hand and long scepter in left; aphlaston beneath throne; ΕΞΡ (date) and ΣΙΔΩ in exergue.

Ref: SC 1829; HGC 9, 879; cf. CSE 714 (same type, ex Pozzi collection). Ex Auctiones AG 8 (1978), lot 352; Münzen & Medaillen GmbH 46 (2018), lot 281.

At 16.76g the coin is issued at the full weight for the slightly reduced Attic standard of the mid-second century, about 16.8g. The date in the exergue, ΕΞΡ, gives year 165 of the Seleucid era (148/7 BC; the Seleucid era counts from 312 BC and began in autumn). The date is folowed by the mint signature ΣΙΔΩ, the abbreviation Sidon used throughout its second-century silver.

The book of 1 Maccabees 10:67 records that in this year Demetrius II arrived in Syria from Crete to reclaim his father's throne. In the same span the eastern provinces were passing out of royal control: Media fell to Mithridates I of Parthia, and Susiana was lost soon after.

Provenance and Earlier Records

Here are the pictures of this coin from earlier auctions - starting with this oldest one from 1978.

Auctiones AG 8 (1978), lot 352; J. Rouvier, Numismatique des villes de la Phénicie, Journal International d'Archéologie Numismatique 5 (1902), 125, 1233

Another example of this type referenced in J. Rouvier and found plate XV.6 in Gardner 1878

Percy Gardner, Catalogue of Greek Coins in the British Museum: The Seleucid Kings of Syria, edited by Reginald Stuart Poole (London: British Museum, Department of Coins and Medals, 1878), p. 51, no. 7, pl. XV, fig. 6.

A Pretender and His Titles

Alexander Balas appeared in 153/2 BC claiming to be a son of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Seleucid king who had died in 164 BC. Heracleides of Miletus, a former minister of Antiochus IV, presented him to the Roman senate together with Laodice, a genuine daughter of Antiochus IV, and obtained a decree permitting the pair to pursue their inheritance (Polyb. 33.18). Attalus II of Pergamum and Ptolemy VI Philometor of Egypt supplied the money and troops behind the decree.

Landing at Ptolemais-Ake (modern Acre in Israel) in 152 BC, Alexander won the loyalty of Jonathan Maccabee, leader of the Judean revolt, by granting him the high priesthood of Jerusalem (1 Macc 10:18–21). By the summer of 150 BC Demetrius I was defeated and dead, and Alexander sealed the Egyptian alliance by marrying Ptolemy's daughter Cleopatra Thea at Ptolemais (1 Macc 10:57–58).

The literary sources are hostile to his origins. Justin describes him as a youth of the humblest station, put forward because he resembled the royal family (Just. Epit. 35.1), and Diodorus records chiefly his idleness once enthroned (Diod. Sic. 33.3). The titles on this coin answer those charges. The reverse legend ΘΕΟΠΑΤΟΡΟΣ ("of a divine father") declares Alexander's claimed descent from Antiochus IV, whose own cult title was Theos Epiphanes, "God Manifest". The word is deliberately ambiguous: it can mean the son of a deified king or the son of a god. The second title, ΕΥΕΡΓΕΤΟΥ ("of the benefactor"), names a conventional royal virtue.

Sidon Between Two Standards

No mint in the Seleucid kingdom had struck the enthroned Zeus longer than Sidon. From 333/2 BC the city issued dated tetradrachms of Alexander the Great's type, with the head of Herakles on the obverse and Zeus enthroned with eagle and scepter on the reverse, among the earliest dated issues of the entire Alexandrine coinage (Newell 1916). By the reign of Balas, however, Sidon had been converted, only two or three years earlier, to the king's closed Phoenician-weight coinage system: tetradrachms of about 14.2 g with Ptolemaic types, a diademed royal portrait and an eagle with palm frond (SC 1830), money made for a maritime economy tied to Egypt.

Yet this coin (SC 1829) is struck at full weight for the slightly reduced Attic standard of the mid-second century. Rogers observed that from Alexander Balas down to Antiochus IX the Sidonian mint issued Attic-weight regal silver alongside its Phoenician-weight coinage, and connected the disruption of the Phoenician mints in this very year to the war (Rogers 1927). Imperial-weight silver produced locally, in the year the kingdom mobilized against an invader, is most plausibly coinage struck to pay troops, whom the city's Ptolemaic-weight currency could not serve.

Zeus Keraunophoros: The Thunderbolt

The reverse type, unusual on Seleucid royal coinage, shows Zeus enthroned as Keraunophoros ("thunderbolt bearer"), holding a thunderbolt rather than the expected Nike (the winged figure of Victory) or eagle in his outstretched hand. The god himself points to Antiochus IV, who had made Zeus the center of Seleucid royal religion, displacing the dynasty's ancestral type of Apollo seated on the omphalos, the sacred "navel stone" of Delphi. For a king styled ΘΕΟΠΑΤΟΡΟΣ ("of the divine father"), the god of his claimed father (Zeus) was the natural choice.

Alexander the Great as Zeus Keraunophoros. Roman fresco, House of the Vettii, Pompeii, c. AD 70, thought to copy the lost portrait by Apelles of Cos painted for the temple of Artemis at Ephesus (Pliny, Natural History 35.92).

The image also recalls a famous painting by Apelles of Cos, court painter to Alexander the Great, which portrayed the king as Zeus Keraunophoros. Pliny wrote of the artist:

"But it was Apelles of Cos who surpassed all the painters that preceded and all who were to come after him; he dates in the 112th Olympiad. He singly contributed almost more to painting than all the other artists put together, also publishing volumes containing the principles of painting." (Pliny, Natural History XXXV.79)

The thunderbolt carried meanings of its own. Thunder received cult at Seleucia Pieria, the seaport of Antioch, whose foundation story Appian preserves: "a portent of thunder preceded the foundation of the one by the sea, for which reason he consecrated thunder as a divinity of the place" (App. Syr. 58). In the very next year, Seleucid 166, the mint of Seleucia Pieria struck tetradrachms for Alexander with a head of Zeus on the obverse and, as the entire reverse type, a thunderbolt within a laurel wreath. The thunderbolt is also the perch of the Ptolemaic eagle, and some of Alexander's own Phoenician-weight eagles at Ptolemais-Ake stand explicitly on thunderbolts; in the hand of Zeus it may also allude to the king's marriage alliance with Ptolemy VI. All of these references : Antiochus, Seleucia Pieria, Alexander the Great, Ptolemy, collectively reinforcing the legitimacy of a pretender to the throne.

The Aphlaston: Sidon's Civic Signature

Beneath the throne is an aphlaston, the curved ornament crowning the stern of a Greek warship. It is Sidon's civic signature, proclaiming the seafaring city's naval power, and the same emblem appears on the city's Phoenician-weight eagles.

Census and Rarity

Rogers (1927) connected the disorganization of the Phoenician mints directly to Ptolemy’s expedition and singled out the Attic-weight Sidon tetradrachm as its witness, adding that the coins of this year are the rarest of the reign.

Only six examples of the type are known. Two appear in Seleucid Coins Online, two in auction records (CNG, 2023 and Roma Numismatics, June 2018), and a fifth in Coin Archives, May 2026. The present specimen is the sixth (16.76 g, 31 mm), previously Auctiones AG 8 (1978), lot 352, and Münzen & Medaillen GmbH 46 (2018), lot 281. Its full weight and lack of wear are consistent with an emergency issue that barely circulated before being stashed away in a war zone.

The End of the Reign

The war turned quickly against Alexander. Ptolemy VI Philometor marched an army up the coast road through the Phoenician cities, Sidon among them, ostensibly in his son-in-law's support, garrisoning each town as he went. Then, alleging a plot against his life, he took back his daughter Cleopatra Thea and remarried her to the challenger Demetrius II. In 145 BC the two allies defeated Alexander at the river Oenoparas, near Antioch (in modern Turkey, near the Syrian border).

Alexander fled to an Arab chieftain named Zabdiel, who beheaded him and sent the head to Ptolemy. Ptolemy, badly injured in the battle, lived just long enough to see it, dying of his wounds days later. 1 Maccabees 11:14–19 records both deaths, noting that "Demetrius became king in the one hundred sixty-seventh year," two years after this coin was struck.

I will conclude with a bronze from Demetrius II. The reverse restores Apollo seated on the omphalos, the ancestral type that Balas's Zeus had displaced, with Zeus demoted to the obverse. The dynasty's old god returns with the legitimate line.

Seleukid Kingdom, Syria, Antioch on the Orontes, Demetrios II Nikator (King, first reign, 146–138 BC), Æ Denomination A — quadruple unit, struck 146–145 BC. Obv: Laureate head of Zeus right. / Rev: ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΔΗΜΗΤΡΙΟΥ ΘΕΟΥ ΦΙΛΑΔΕΛΦΟΥ ΝΙΚΑΤΟΡΟΣ, Apollo seated left on omphalos, testing arrow in right hand and resting left hand on grounded bow. / Ref: SC 1912; HGC 9, —.

References

• Houghton, A. 1983. Coins of the Seleucid Empire from the Collection of Arthur Houghton (CSE). New York: American Numismatic Society.

• Houghton, A. 1988. “The Double Portrait Coins of Alexander I Balas and Cleopatra Thea.” Schweizerische Numismatische Rundschau 67: 85–93.

• Houghton, A., C. Lorber, and O. Hoover. 2008. Seleucid Coins: A Comprehensive Catalogue. Part 2, Seleucus IV through Antiochus XIII (SC). New York and Lancaster: American Numismatic Society and Classical Numismatic Group.

• Hoover, O. D. 2009. Handbook of Syrian Coins: Royal and Civic Issues, Fourth to First Centuries BC (HGC 9). Lancaster: Classical Numismatic Group.

• Mørkholm, O. 1966. Antiochus IV of Syria. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.

• Newell, E. T. 1916. The Dated Alexander Coinage of Sidon and Ake. New Haven: Yale University Press.

• Rogers, E. 1927. The Second and Third Seleucid Coinage of Tyre. Numismatic Notes and Monographs 34. New York: American Numismatic Society.

• Ancient sources cited: 1 Maccabees 10–11; Polybius 33.18; Diodorus Siculus 32–33; Justin, Epitome 35; Appian, Syriaca 14; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 13.

• Iossif, P. P. 2018. "The Numismatic Production of Antiochos IV: Tool of Diplomacy or Legitimacy? A Quantifying Approach of Hoard Evidence." Electrum 25: 47–72.