Stater - Sauromates II Septimius Severus

Sauromates II ruled the Bosporan Kingdom as a client king under Roman oversight, and this stater reflects that arrangement directly — the pairing of a local dynast with a reigning Roman emperor on the coinage was standard Bosporan practice, effectively advertising the political dependency in metal. By Sauromates II's reign, the electrum content of these staters had degraded substantially from earlier issues, a deliberate debasement that accelerated through the third century as the kingdom's economic position weakened.

Anokhin 1824 places this among the better-documented dies of the type, though die-link studies by MacDonald identify considerable variety within the series.