Diobol - Orodes II

Orodes II secured the Parthian throne through fratricide — he had his brother Mithridates III hunted down and executed after a prolonged civil war — and his reign culminated in the catastrophic Roman defeat at Carrhae in 53 BC, where Crassus lost seven legions to the Parthian general Surena. The diobol denomination served intra-regional commerce rather than the prestige economy of the drachm, and surviving examples in any grade above corroded are uncommon precisely because small silver circulated hardest.