A Seleucid Coinage of Demetrias by the Sea

Abstract

The author defends the controversial identification of Demetrias by the Sea as a Seleucid
re-foundation of Strato’s Tower in southern Phoenicia. He further suggests that a dated
series of drachms of the Seleucid king Demetrius II from an unknown Phoenician mint
and marked with the monogram should be attributed to Demetrias-Strato’s Tower.
The dates link the coinage to the crisis that ensued in Phoenicia and Coele Syria after the
murders of Jonathan Apphus and Antiochus VI. The later civic coinage of Demetrias may
have drawn its cornucopia type from the drachms of Demetrius II.