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Olbia, the ancient Greek colony at the mouth of the Bug River on the Black Sea's northern shore, had an exceptionally long and independent minting tradition — but by the late 1st century BC, the city was under mounting pressure from Scythian raids and the encroaching influence of Mithridates VI of Pontus. These small bronzes belong to a period when Olbia's civic autonomy was real but fragile, squeezed between steppe peoples to the north and Pontic ambitions to the west.