Didrachm - Mithridates VI Panticapaeum

Mithridates VI of Pontus seized control of the Bosporan Kingdom around 110 BC after his ward Laodice — regent for the young king Parisades V — proved unable to hold the territory against Scythian pressure. The Bosporan coinage issued under his authority, including this didrachm from Panticapaeum, belongs to a period when Mithridates was simultaneously fighting Rome across Anatolia and the Aegean. The First Mithridatic War ended in 85 BC with the Peace of Dardanus; the years this piece spans fall across that settlement and into the uneasy interval before the Second.

Panticapaeum, the dominant mint city on the Cimmerian Bosporus, had a centuries-long coinage tradition before Mithridatic control formalized it into a provincial output serving Black Sea commerce and military pay.