Drachm - Mithridates II

Mithridates II earned the epithet "the Great" for a reason: during his reign he pushed Parthian territory to its greatest extent, absorbing Mesopotamia from the Seleucids and extracting a humiliating submission from Tigranes of Armenia, who spent two decades as a Parthian hostage before being installed as a client king. It was also Mithridates II who received the first recorded Roman diplomatic mission to the Parthian court, around 96 BC — a meeting that unnerved Rome enough to become a point of senatorial debate.

Sellwood 27.1 belongs to his middle coinage, before the diadem portraits shifted toward the more elaborate late types.