File:Coins of Alexander the Great, B.C. 336-323, Archaeological Museum, Pella (7061168779).jpg

The coinage of Alexander is a branch of Numismatics too extensive and complicated for discussion in detail in the present work. The gold Philippi and the silver tetra- drachms (225 grs.) of his father Philip had, for a period of about twenty years, been the chief currency throughout Philip’s European dominions, and it is hardly likely that Alexander would have abolished these coins and introduced a new standard (the Attic) for his silver money until he found himself compelled to do so for commercial reasons. The fall in the price of gold in relation to silver was probably one, though not per- haps the chief, of these reasons. The general depreciation of gold made it no doubt impossible for him to maintain, by royal decree, the old relation of 13.3: 1 to silver which had prevailed in the East down to the fall of the Persian Empire, according to which 1 gold Daric of about 130 grs. was tariffed as equivalent to 20 silver sigloi of about 86½ grs., or to 10 silver staters of Persic wt., of about 173 grs. The inveterate con- servatism of the East, which could brook no change in the number of silver coins exchangeable for a gold piece, would not however be startled by a modification of the weights of the two denominations.