English: KINGS of PONTOS. Mithradates VI. 120-63 BC. AR Tetradrachm (16.82 g, 12h). Pergamon mint. Dated month 1 of 206 BE (October 92 BC). Diademed head right, hair neatly tucked under diadem / BASILEWS MIQRADATOU EUPATOROS, stag grazing left; star-in-crescent to left, CS (year) and monogram to right, A (month) in exergue; all within Dionysiac wreath of ivy and fruit. De Callataÿ p. 11 (D32/R1 - this coin listed as specimen a); RG -; SNG Copenhagen -; BMC -; SNG von Aulock -. EF, toned, slight die shift on reverse. Struck from fine style dies. Unique. ($4000)

Ex Classical Numismatic Group 42 (29 May 1992), lot 414; Geheimrat von Kaufmann Collection (Hamburger 89, 27 May 1929), lot 290.

Intro for section

Mithradates is the Hellenistic monarch par excellence, his career driven by megalomaniacal ambitions leading to murderous assaults upon family and followers and disastrous foreign adventures against superior forces. His idealized portraiture attempts to mimic the gods with its bold staring gaze and unruly, free-flowing hair, but at its most extreme is a personification of hysteria in its Dionysiac sense. The wreath of ivy on the reverse reinforces Mithradates' link with the god as well as making a connection with the cistaphoric coinage that circulated in the area. The stag probably represents the civic center of Ephesos and the mintmark is of Pergamon, all part of the new Pontic kingdom, symbolized by the star and crescent. His empire collapsed before the armies of Sulla and Lucullus, and Mithradates ended his own life an exile in the far region of the Crimea, pursued to the end by vengeful Romans and family.