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COINAGE OF ANTIOCHUS VIII OP SYRIA. 191him not a hook-nosed man, but the most hook-nosedman that ever lived. the time that he had reachedBythe age of forty-five, the tip of his nose was makinga perceptible effort to grow down towards his upperlip. 2 If he had reached old age the problem of thenut-cracker would apparently have been reached, forhis strong projecting chin was also growing. 3 But thedagger of a treacherous minister cut short the life ofthe much-beaked king before the final developmentshad the chance of appearing.It was, I think, this tremendous nose which firstattracted me towards the study of the chronology ofthe coins of a monarch who turned out on examinationto be a person of considerable interest, numismaticallyas well as historically. His reign was, long for that ofa Hellenistic king, since he was first recognized in125 B.C., and maintained himself on the throne till96 B.C., a term of thirty years in all. And his lifeand wars synchronize with the break final^ up of theSeleucid :empire none of his successors ever againruled over the whole of the broad lands from Taurusto the River of Egypt. After him came a few yearsmore of civil war, and the final disaster of the dynasty,which fell before the sword of the Armenian " GreatKing" Tigranes. The coinage of Grypus gives us akey to the progressive downfall of the Seleucidae hisfirst coins are quite up to the level of the art of anyof his second-century ancestors. His last have slippeddown towards the hieratic and stereotyped semibarbarismof those of the sons and nephews, who2 See especially PI. VIII. 8, 9.8For a recent note on a bust of Grypus discovered at Athens,see Bulletin de Correspondance Hellenique, 1915, p. 30.