These are two faces of a coin minted during the reign of Alexander. The left side shows Athena armed for battle, and the right shows a winged Nike, goddess of victory. Ernst A. Fredericksmeyer focuses on the significance of the face depicting Athena: “Athena may have been chosen, at least in part, because she was the eponymous goddess of Athens, which had been the main victim of the Persians (and whose cooperation Alexander needed)… (Fredericksmeyer 204). We see once again the patron goddess of Athens being exploited by a ruler. Because of the city’s history of conflict with the Persians, Alexander justifies his invasion of the East with the idea that he is avenging the Greek deity and her citizens. This points to not only the importance of seeming to be on the side of the gods even as an already powerful figure, but also the fact that rulers were able to control the path of Greek religious history for their own needs. Alexander has made himself the inheritor of this relationship between the goddess and the polis.
Exhibition of Ancient Greek Religion 