Stater - Ininthimeus

Ininthimeus ruled the Bosporan Kingdom for roughly a decade during the mid-third century, a period when the kingdom was increasingly dependent on — and threatened by — Gothic and other steppe confederacies pressing around the Black Sea littoral. His billon staters represent the continuation of a coinage that had been debasing steadily for generations; by this point the nominal electrum of earlier Bosporan issues had long since collapsed to a heavily copper-based alloy retaining only a surface wash of silver. The kingdom kept the stater denomination alive largely as a political instrument, maintaining the fiction of a Hellenistic monetary tradition.