NUMISMATIC MUSEUM, ATHENS THE PETROS Z. SAROGLOS COLLECTION: MACEDONIA

Τhe Petros Ζ. Saroglos Collection came to the Numismatic Museum of Athens as a use-loan by the Officers Club of the Armed Forces in July 1998. The final transaction was sealed with the signing of the relevant contract by the Minister of Culture. Earlier, during the decade of the 1960s, there had been continuous negotiations by representatives of the Archaeological Service with the Administration of the Officers Club in an effort to find a satisfactory solution to the question of cataloguing and making scholarly use of the Collection, which was held in a safebox of the Νational Bank of Greece. Through adverse circumstances, however, these negotiations had not been fruitful. The Saroglos Collection, comprising 2000 ancient Greek coins, was occasionally brought to the attention of international scholarly circles of the time, thanks to the extraordinary courtesy of its aristocratic owner, always ready to promote the study of the coinage of the Greek cities and, especially, that of the kings of Macedonia and of the Hellenistic rulers. The presence of a large number of coins of Alexander the Great in the Ρ .Ζ. Saroglos Collection came about, indeed; not only through the special interest of the collector in the mints of the conqueror of the Achaemenid kingdom, but also a result of the period during which the Collection was made. As a retired artillary lieutenant from 1897 on, Ρ .Ζ. Saroglos collected these coins through purchases .abroad and in Greece during the first two decades of the 20th century . Ρ .Ζ. Saroglos experienced with intensity the beginning of a particularly dramatic century as a member of the Ethniki Etaireia and a sponsor of the Macedonian Struggle. Always a philhellene in the true sense of the word, he bequeathed his vast fortune and his various valuable collections to the Ministry of Land and Sea. As a veritable child of his epoch, an epoch marked by the quest for and the illusions of the Megale Idea (the Great Idea), Petros Ζ. Saroglos served in