Mithradates’ Last Known Stater

CNG 93, Lot: 339. Estimate $20000. Sold for $32500. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

KINGS of PONTOS. Mithradates VI Eupator. Circa 120-63 BC. AV Stater (22mm, 8.45 g, 12h). Pergamon mint. Dated month 12, year 223 BE (September 74 BC). Diademed head right / Stag grazing left; BAΣIΛEΩΣ above, MIΘPAΔATOY/EYΠATOPOΣ in two lines below; to left, star-in-crescent above ΓKΣ (year); two monograms to right, IB (month) in exergue; all within Dionysiac wreath of ivy and fruit. Unpublished, but cf. Callataÿ dies D52-55 for tetradrachms from the same date, certainly by the same engraver. Near EF, a few light marks. Superb high relief portrait, boldly struck and beautifully centered on a broad flan. A unique example, the latest known stater from his reign.

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 reference to 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.