Mithridates VI struck this issue at Pergamon following his seizure of the city during the First Mithridatic War, using the mint infrastructure of what had recently been the capital of the Roman province of Asia. The EΣ monogram places it within de Callataÿ's chronological sequence for the Pergamene civic-royal coinage, year 205 of the Pontic era — a dating system Mithridates deployed deliberately to project dynastic continuity stretching back to the Achaemenid satraps he claimed as ancestors.
The Pergamon mint issues of this war period are among the better-documented in the series precisely because de Callataÿ's die study gave them structural order. This example's control marks narrow it to a specific emission within that sequence.
Mithridates VI struck this issue at Pergamon following his seizure of the city during the First Mithridatic War, using the mint infrastructure of what had recently been the capital of the Roman province of Asia. The EΣ monogram places it within de Callataÿ's chronological sequence for the Pergamene civic-royal coinage, year 205 of the Pontic era — a dating system Mithridates deployed deliberately to project dynastic continuity stretching back to the Achaemenid satraps he claimed as ancestors.
The Pergamon mint issues of this war period are among the better-documented in the series precisely because de Callataÿ's die study gave them structural order. This example's control marks narrow it to a specific emission within that sequence.