Alexander the Great on Lead: Notes on Some Tokens from Roman Imperial Athens

The deeds and legend of Alexander the Great have notoriously had a strong attraction for both ancient and modern scholarship up to the present day. However, while the representation of the Macedonian king on coins and in literary sources has been the focus of a number of studies, the evidence from ancient tokens has yet to be properly addressed. This article focuses on a small group of imperial Athenian tokens (symbola) bearing a male head with windblown hair which will be interpreted as Alexander the Great. The purpose of this contribution is to explore the meaning of these special ‘Alexanders’, whose previously neglected iconography highlights unseen components and intersections in the development of the Alexander’s imagery in the Graeco-Roman world. Also, these coin-like objects offer a first-hand insight into the appreciation of Alexander’s legend in imperial Athenian society, and encourage us to investigate the motivations of the contemporary authorities that were responsible for their production.