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Persian Empire, Achaemenids, Darius II or Artaxerxes II, Daric

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Persian Empire, Achaemenids, Darius II or Artaxerxes II, Daric (obverse) Persian Empire, Achaemenids, Darius II or Artaxerxes II, Daric (reverse)

The name "daric" for the Perisan gold coins derives from the motif on those coins. For more than 200 years they featured the Persian Great King as an archer. This is why the Greeks started to identify the Persian gold coins simply as "archers," in Greek "dareikoi." The motif on the daric had no equivalent in the western world; it was a genuine Achaemenid creation. Hence darics could easily and instantly be identified as Persian money. They were mainly used in Persian foreign policy: The Persian kings financed and supported the allied Greek cities and thus influenced Greek policy considerably.

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