Stater - Sauromates I Trajan

Sauromates I ruled the Bosporan Kingdom as a client of Rome, and this stater belongs to the series issued under Trajan's overlordship — a relationship formalized through political submission and backed by Roman military guarantees against steppe incursions. The Bosporan gold stater had by this period evolved into something distinctly hybrid: nominally Greek in denomination and tradition, but increasingly subordinate in iconography to the reigning emperor in Rome.

MacDonald 375/1 places this among the earlier issues of the Sauromates I series, before the progressive debasement that would gradually erode the gold content of later Bosporan staters across the second and third centuries.