Obol - Pharnakes II Panticapaeum

Pharnakes II ruled the Bosporan Kingdom as a client of Rome following his father Mithridates VI's suicide in 63 BC, but spent much of his reign attempting to reclaim the Pontic territories his father had lost. His ambitions ended at Zela in 47 BC, where Julius Caesar defeated him so swiftly and completely that it reportedly prompted the famous dispatch: *veni, vidi, vici*. Bronze civic coinage from Panticapaeum continued through this turbulent period largely undisturbed — the grain trade through the Cimmerian Bosporus was too economically critical to interrupt regardless of dynastic upheaval.