Stater - Aspurgus Augustus and Agrippa

Aspurgus secured his position as client king of the Bosporan Kingdom through careful alignment with Rome, and this coin commemorates that relationship explicitly — struck in the year he received formal recognition from Tiberius, it pairs his own image with that of Agrippa, who had died some two decades earlier but remained a potent symbol of Augustan authority and Roman naval power. The posthumous honor accorded to Agrippa here is a political calculation, not sentiment.

The stater's gold content reflects the Bosporan kingdom's access to Pontic trade wealth. Aspurgus would be dead within a few years, leaving a succession crisis that Rome would be forced to arbitrate.