Drachm - Mithridates I Seleucia

Mithridates I transformed the Parthian state from a minor breakaway satrapy into a genuine imperial power, seizing Media around 148 BC and Seleucia-on-the-Tigris — the largest city in the Near East — by roughly 141 BC. Striking coinage at Seleucia was a deliberate act of legitimacy, appropriating the premier mint of the Seleucid world almost immediately after its capture. Sellwood 13.6 belongs to the mature phase of his coinage, after the consolidation of Mesopotamia but likely before the Saka incursions that consumed the empire's eastern attention in his final years.