Les Antigonides et la Grèce égéenne : numismatique et morceaux choisis

Among the three great Hellenistic dynasties that inherited the empire of Alexander the Great, the Antigonids, unlike the Seleucids and the Lagids, have not yet had a new reference synthesis of their history through coins. The study of E. T. Newell on Demetrius Poliorcetes (1927), A. Mamroth on Philip V (1930) or H. Gaebler on the more general history of Macedonia (1935) are still authoritative. If the historiographical renewal is underway, certain old questions are still relevant: the real or supposed depletion of the kingdom’s resources under Demetrius Poliorcetes; the reestablishment of the kingdom’s prosperity under Antigonus Gonatas and Antigonus Dôsôn; the fiscal and mining reforms supposed to raise Macedonia after Philip V’s defeat by Rome; the reduction of the Attic standard for Perseus’s tetradrachms, probably to finance the war; a transformation of the kingdom’s institutional structures under the last rulers, with the emergence of the so-called “autonomous” coinages in the 2nd century BC, alongside the royal coinage. In addition, there is the question of the relations of the Antigonids with the non-Macedonian areas of their “influence area” (Aegean Sea, Peloponnese) where tensions, in particular with the Koina and the Lagids, lead to a fresh review of the forms of domination and exercise of power that the Antigonids could exercise outside the “fetters of Greece”... all questions that need to be reevaluated.

The contributions gathered here are part of this dynamic. This book is an opportunity to present the results of analyses of Antigonid coins in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, carried out within the framework of a research project financed by the MSH Val-de-Loire. It aims to bring together the views of historians from different backgrounds in order to contribute to the current dynamic of Antigonid studies, by approaching this field of research through the predominant, but not exclusive, study of coins.