v59_0043 - CELTI DEL DANUVIO Tétradrachme “au W”

DANUBIAN CELTS - IMITATIONS OF THE TETRADRACHMS OF PHILIP II AND HIS SUCCESSORS

(3rd-1st century BC)

Under this title are generally grouped all the coinages that do not have a precise attribution. Sometimes the term "Eastern Celts" is offered. After the Celts plundered Delphi and spread through Greece and Asia Minor, they seized a significant amount of spoils, thanks to their plunder. The Hellenistic kings, Diadoques or Epigones, used them as mercenaries in their armies where the average salary was normally one stater of gold corresponding to five tetradrachms of Attic standard or twenty drachms. The prototypes which represented the head of Zeus with a horseman were widely copied and imitated throughout the Balkans, northern Macedonia and Thrace. The final phase of the coinage occurs at the end of the 2nd century or the beginning of the first century BC where there are no traces of the obverse and the reverse as well as legends more than a domed face of a coin. practically smooth on both sides.