Stater - Rhescuporis II Elagabalus

Rhescuporis II ruled the Bosporan Kingdom as a client of Rome, and this stater falls within the joint-reign period when his coinage was aligned with the emperors of the Severan dynasty — here, Elagabalus, who himself reigned barely four years before being murdered by the Praetorian Guard in 222 AD. The Bosporan practice of coupling the local dynast's portrait with that of the reigning Roman emperor on electrum staters was not ceremonial flattery but a political necessity: the kingdom's survival depended on continued Roman recognition.

By this period the electrum content had degraded substantially from earlier Bosporan issues, a long decline that had begun under Sauromates II in the late second century.