Ancient Coin Stories

Lysimachos made his name by playing with a cat. We don’t know the name of the cat, other than several legends which ended with him pissing off Alexander the Great for one reason or another. As a reward for this insolence, Alexander threw him into a cage with a lion. Lysimachos, though, rather than die the horrible death intended, defeated the lion with his bare hands.

There remains much about the situation that we don’t know. Was the lion at the top of his game? Maybe he was depressed, having been rejected by a lioness earlier that morning, and so didn’t really feel like eating someone. Maybe he had a cold. Maybe Lysimachos just scratched him on the belly and the two had a grand old time cuddling. We just don’t know.

We do know that after the encounter, Alexander placed him among his bodyguards. After Alexander‘s death, he was given Thrace. Unfortunately, Thrace at that time was occupied by Seuthes III, so the two had a number of battles since Lysimachos had been assigned the territory and Seuthes III had nowhere else to go.

It was then that Lysimachos maybe felt too confident in his situation, since he married. His first wife was Amastris, who wasn’t so bad. However, he really wanted Arsinoe II, daughter of Ptolemy I Soter. In reality, he should have stuck with Nikaea, the daughter of Antipater, who gave him his eldest son Agathokles, daughter Eurydike, and another daughter.

Over the next few years, Lysimachos took part in the Macedonian Games. Demetrios was initially at the top of the scoreboard, having killed Kassander‘s son Alexander V. However, Lysimachos and Pyrrhos teamed up to oust him, then Lysimachos ousted Pyrrhos. Now, Lysimachos was top of the Macedonian mountain.

However, not all was chirpy. First, he had to constantly hear his daughter Eurydike and her husband Antipater II yap about losing Macedonia. So, he executed Antipater II, but that made his daughter only more upset. So, he put her to death too.

Then, just when he was getting into the groove of executing his kids, his wife Arsinoe II schemed up with her half-brother Ptolemy Keraunos to make Lysimachos believe that his son Agathokles was planning to subvert him. So, he killed Agathokles, which turned out to be very unpopular. His wife ran to Seleukos I Nikator, who used the situation to arrive with a huge army and kill Lysimachos.

Yet, just when Seleukos prepared to take over the Macedonian leaderboard, he was stabbed in the back by Ptolemy Keraunos, who survived only a few years before the Gauls put his head on a spike.

In retrospect, Lysimachos should have just hung around with the lion.