Stater - Aspurgus Augustus and Agrippa

Aspurgus was the first Bosporan king to receive Roman citizenship and the title of friend of Rome, granted by Augustus around 14 AD — a diplomatic arrangement that locked the kingdom firmly into the Roman orbit while preserving the fiction of local autonomy. Striking his gold coinage with the portrait of Augustus alongside Agrippa was a calculated act of loyalty, placing him visually on the same register as the two most powerful men in the empire.

Year 23 in the Bosporan reckoning corresponds to a moment when Aspurgus was consolidating dynastic control after years of contested succession. The Agrippa pairing is notable — by this date Agrippa had been dead for years, making this a posthumous honorific rather than a contemporary political statement.