2 Denarii - Sauromates II

Sauromates II ruled the Bosporan Kingdom as a client king under Roman suzerainty, and his coinage reflects that dependency directly — the denomination itself, expressed in Roman denarii equivalents, was a deliberate alignment with the imperial monetary system rather than any native Bosporan tradition. The kingdom's copper issues of this period were effectively fiduciary tokens whose acceptance depended on Roman-backed political authority rather than intrinsic metal value.

The reign dates overlap precisely with that of Commodus in Rome, whose erratic fiscal policies created ripple effects even in peripheral client states.