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Demetrius was a soldier in the army of Alexander III of Macedon (The Great). He went to Asia, arrived in Caria and participated in the occupation of Hallicarnassus in Asia Minor (Modern Turkey) in 334 BCE. He received as a reward for the success of the siege a gold coin minted during the short reign of Pixodarus (335 BCE) in Hallicarnassus.
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Demetrius survived Alexander's campaigns and old but glorious returned to Macedonia. He chose not to stay in Pella but build his house in the area of modern Vergina, most probably the site of the old Macedonia capital of Aegai.
Unfortunately though a few years later, his wife or his daughter died and Demetrius in deep grief decided to bury the precious gold coin and jewels along with the dead woman. Soon enough a relative found out about the treasure hidden in the grave and decided to steal it. He asked his friends to help him and they dug an underground tunnel all the way to the wooden door of the grave. They found the treasure and they began collecting the pieces. One of the men was in the tunnel and the others were at the opening. Suddenly somebody shouted that the man in the tunnel was hiding some jewels for himself. "Look" he said "he's got something in his hand!" The others got furious and threw stones to the man in the tunnel until he was dead. Then, they left running with the fear that someone might have heard the man screaming as he was receiving the stones.
The man in the tunnel had just found the gold coin of Pixodarus but as he was trying to hide it, the stones hit him and the coin was lost in the tunnel. 2300 years later Prof. Stella Drougou, an Archaeologist from the Univ. of Thessaaloniki, Macedonia, Greece, and her team excavated in Vergina the grave of the dead woman and brought to light the gold coin of Pixodarus that Demetrius had brought from Hallicarnassus.
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The story above is based on the archaeological excavations of a woman's grave in Vergina but the name Demetrius is just used to make the story more exciting.
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