1 Antioch was founded about 300 BC by Seleukos I Nikator, the founder of the Seleukid Dynasty, and it became the principal capital of the Seleukid Empire. The city was named after a family name Antiochos, passed from his father to his son (Antiochos I Soter). There were a number of other cities by the same name and this Antioch was known as Antioch on the Orontes (i.e. the Orontes River, along which it was located).

2 Newell, The Seleucid Mint of Antioch, p. 73, prefers the allusion to the old Macedonian custom of proclamation by the army: “The Macedonian helmet chosen for the reverse type of all these issues has direct reference to the claim of Tryphon that, –according to the time honored Macedonian custom,– he was supposed to have been unanimously elected by free Macedonian soldiers in open assembly. There may also be intended a punning reference to his name, for in both Homer and Hesiod a helmet is sometimes called τρυφαλεια.” Houghton, Lorber and Hoover, SC II, Vol. I, p. 337, note that the horn on Tryphon’s helmet does not closely resemble short horns which adorn a Macedonian helmet on Roman republican denarii celebrating the defeat of Philip V of Macedon, but it rather recalls the lavishly endowed wild goats depicted on various Thraco-Macedonian coinages of the archaic and classical periods.