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Sestertius - Rhoemetalces
| Issuer | Bosporan Kingdom |
|---|---|
| Year | 133-154 |
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| Currency | Bosporan Units |
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| Obverse description | Diademed and draped bust of King Rhoemetalces facing right, rendered in low relief in the local Bosporan style. A trident appears in the field before the bust, and a club is placed behind it, both serving as dynastic or divine symbols. The encircling Greek legend names the issuing king. The portrait exhibits the typical provincial execution characteristic of Bosporan royal coinage of the mid-second century AD. |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Greek |
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| Additional information |
Rhoemetalces ruled the Bosporan Kingdom as a client king under Roman suzerainty, a political arrangement that defined nearly every aspect of Bosporean coinage through the second century. The copper issues of his reign were struck at Panticapaeum, the kingdom's capital on the Crimean coast, for a local economy that operated semi-independently from the Roman monetary system while remaining visually tethered to it.
MacDonald 454/3 is among the more precisely documented die pairings for this reign, cross-referenced across both Anokhin and the Bosporos corpus — an unusual degree of scholarly consensus for provincial copper of this period.