Watch List notes:

Lysias, circa 120 – 110.
Tetradrachm, Pushkalavati circa 120-110, AR 16.84 g. Bust of Lysias l., seen from behind, wearing crested Boeotian helmet ornamented with ram's horn and fleece (?), brandishing spear in r. hand, shoulders draped with elephant skin with head l. covering king's l. shoulder. Reed border. Rev. ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΑΝΙΚΗΤΟΥ ΛΥΣΙΟΥ Heracles standing facing, crowning himself with r. hand, l. holding club, palm, and lion's skin; in inner lower l. field, TAE ligate and in lower r. field, Σ. Qunduz 614. Bopearachchi Series 2, A, pl. 38. Mitchiner II, 260.
Extremely rare. Struck on a very broad flan and with a light iridescent tone. Slightly
double struck on obverse, otherwise good very fine / about extremely fine

Ex Gemini II, 2006, 168 and Manhattan II, 2011, 74 sales. From the Peter Guber collection.
Like the majority of the Indo-Greek kings, the only evidence for Lysias comes from his coins. Based on the fairly wide dispersal of finds of his coins, which extends not only to the ancient territories of the Paropamisadae and Arachosia, but also to the Punjab, it has been suggested that he may have ruled over the entirety of the Indo-Greek kingdom. The latter was more commonly broken up among several lesser kings. Shared monograms have been used to link Lysias to Antialcidas variously as a contemporary or as a predecessor while the reverse type featuring Herakles crowning himself has been interpreted as an indicator that Lysias claimed descent from Demetrios I (c. 200-185 BC), the Greco-Baktrian king who first invaded India and established the Indo-Greek kingdom. This connection to Demetrios I is further highlighted by his taste for Demetrios' elephant headgear (on other coins) and Lysias' use of the epithet Aniketos ("Invincible"), the title given to Demetrios I on the pedigree coins of the Greco-Baktrian king Agathokles (c. 185-170 BC). This remarkable tetradrachm depicts Lysias as a heroic conqueror armed and armored for battle. The basic heroic portrait type with back turned to the viewer first appears on the Greco-Baktrian coinage of Eukratides I (c. 170-145 BC) where the king is shown with a bare torso wearing a plain Boiotian helmet and brandishing a spear. However, the portrait of Lysias here is more directly modeled on derivative heroic portraits found on the coinage of the Indo-Greek king Menander I (c. 155-130 BC)-the immediate predecessor of Lysias. On Menanader's coins the bare-chested king wears a distinctive Boiotian helmet adorned with the scales of the aegis while the gorgon-headed aegis itself appears over his left shoulder as a sign of his divine protection. The die engravers of Lysias, however, have taken the portrait type even a step further. Since the apotropaic quality of the aegis is already invoked by the scaly helmet worn by Lysias, thyey have replaced the aegis on the shoulder with a beautifully-rendered head of an elephant-a longstanding symbol of India-as if to clarify the region in which Lysias was a hero. Interestingly, whereas the torso of the king is bare on the coins of Eukratides I and Menander I, that of Lysias is draped and cuirassed. It is unclear what may have caused the engravers of Lysias to move away from the heroic nudity of the preceding types. There is no evidence to suggest that Lysias was not equally proud of his physique. Whatever the reason for this development, Lysias' armed and armored heroic type came to enjoy wide popularity in the ancient world and seems to have been the ultimate model for some depictions of Roman military emperors in the third century AD. The same image of Herakles crowning himself also occurs as the reverse type on Roman medallions of Marcus Aruelius, Lucius Verus, and Commodus, but this is thought to reflect the influence of the same Hellenistic Greek statue type on Greco-Baktrian, Indo-Greek, and Roman coin iconography.