Kings of Pontos, Mithradates VI Eupator AV Stater. Pergamon, dated month 12, year 223 BE = September 74 BC. Diademed head right / Pegasos 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. Roma XII, lot 356 = Roma VII, lot 757; CNG 93, lot 339; CNG 94, lot 399; NAC 92, lot 184. otherwise unpublished, but cf. Callataÿ dies D52-55 for tetradrachms from the same date, certainly by the same engraver. 8.42g, 20mm, 11h. Good Very Fine. Extremely Rare; one of six known specimens, and one of the very latest known staters from Mithradates' reign. Although some sources cite the initial battles of the Third Mithradatic War taking place in 74 BC, more recently the Battle of Chalkedon and the siege of Kyzikos have been dated to 73 BC. Cicero supports this dating, as he places Lucullus in Rome in November of 74 BC – Lucullus was only dispatched after reports of Mithradates invasion into Bithynia had reached Rome. Appian also supports the dating of hostilities to early in 73, stating that Mithradates spent 'the remainder of the summer and the whole of the winter' before the outbreak of war in building ships and augmenting his army. In this light, the present stater should be seen as part of Mithradates financial preparations for the war to come, struck on the eve of his invasion of the new Roman province of Bithynia and the start of the Third Mithradatic War (73-63 BC). This conflict, sparked when Nikomedes IV of Bithynia died without heirs in 75 and left his kingdom to Rome, was carefully timed to coincide with the outbreak of the Sertorian rebellion in Spain, thus causing the threat to become greater than its parts, and have serious potential of overturning Roman power. Despite early success, Mithradates was outclassed by the successive Roman generals Cotta, Lucullus and Pompey. Over the course of ten years, great devastation was wrought on Pontos, which eventually in 65 BC was declared by Pompey to be a Roman province. The kingdom of Armenia, which had been allied to Mithradates and fought alongside him, was subjugated and made a client state. Defeated, Mithradates fled to Colchis and from there to the Cimmerian Bosporos. Mithradates' sad end came as he sought the assistance of his son Machares, King of the Cimmerian Bosporus, in raising a new army. Machares, who had allied himself with Rome, refused to assist his father, who according to Cassius Dio, had him put to death, and took the throne of the Bosporan kingdom for himself. His younger son, Pharnakes, backed by a disgruntled and war weary populace, led a rebellion against his father. Mithradates, either despairing now for the loss of his authority or because he was forced to do so by Pharnakes, attempted to commit suicide by taking poison. However, because he had taken tiny doses of all available poisons throughout his life to guard against assassination, the attempt failed and he was forced to ask his Gallic friend and bodyguard Bituitus to kill him by sword. His body was sent to Pompey, by whose instruction it was buried with all decorum alongside those of his ancestors.
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