Alexander continued the use of the portrait of Heracles, the ancestor of the Argead line, on the obverse of his silver and bronze like the kings before him since Perdiccas II in the mid-fifth century BCE (Fig. 2, 3 & 4 ff.).
Heracles was a popular divine figure in both Greece and Macedonia, and the hero who had earned his divine status through labours on the mortal plane was an especially apt figure for the young Alexander. In fact, Heracles’ features on Alexander’s coinage were modelled on Alexander’s own so that it was difficult to tell the two apart; and since it was Alexander’s features, one might well argue that actually it was a depiction of Alexander himself.
