Bronze issue of Antiochus II Theos (261–246 BC) belonging to the coinage of the Seleucid dynasty during the period of consolidation of a kingdom stretching across Asia Minor, Syria, and Mesopotamia.
Antiochus II, the son of Antiochus I Soter and grandson of Seleucus I Nicator, is attested in ancient sources such as Appian and Justin as a ruler engaged in maintaining control over the western satrapies and involved in conflicts with the Ptolemaic kingdom during the so-called Second Syrian War.
The obverse depicts the head of Apollo facing right, wearing a laurel wreath. The image of this god was among the most prominent iconographic motifs in Seleucid coinage and appears consistently in dynastic issues from the reign of Seleucus I onward. In numismatic scholarship the cult of Apollo has often been connected with the dynastic ideology of the Seleucid house and with religious traditions associated with the sanctuary of Apollo at Didyma.
The reverse shows a tripod, an object closely associated with the cult of Apollo and his oracular sanctuaries.
Greece
Seleukid Kingdom, Antiochos II Theos (261-246 BC), AE
Obverse: laureate head of Apollo right
Reverse: tripod, anchor below
ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ANTIOXOY
Diameter 19 mm, weight 4.40 g
