From Artistic Dies
From CNA XVI, NFA XXV, Sternberg XV & Lanz 28
KINGS of PONTOS. Mithradates VI Eupator. Circa 120-63 BC. AR Tetradrachm (31mm, 16.87 g, 11h). Pergamon mint. Dated month 4 of 223 BE (January 74 BC). Diademed head right / Stag grazing left; BAΣIΛEΩΣ above, MIΘPAΔATOY/EYΠATOPOΣ in two lines below; to left, star-in-crescent above monogram; to right, ΓKΣ (year) above monogram; Δ (month) in exergue; all within Dionysiac wreath of ivy and fruit. Callataÿ dies D42/R1b (this coin); HGC 7, 340. Choice EF, toned. Struck from artistically engraved dies.
Ex Classical Numismatic Auction XVI (16 August 1991), lot 156; Numismatic Fine Arts XXV (29 November 1990), lot 120; Sternberg XV (11 April 1985), lot 129; Lanz 28 (7 May 1984), lot 243.
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 in exile in the far region of the Crimea, pursued to the end by vengeful Romans and family.
