The history of minting coins of the Pontic kingdom probably began during the reign of King Mithridates II , who ruled ca. 250 BC er - OK. 210 BC er For the early Pontic coins, the coins with the image of Alexander the Great served as a model. Late coinage coins are known for realistic portraits of the Pontic kings, who emphasized their Iranian roots. The Pontic coin portrait developed in isolation from the wider Hellenistic tradition. However, during the reign of Mithridates V and his son Mithridates VI, the Pontic minting deviated somewhat from Eastern influences.
Pontic mints experimented with new materials for minting coins. In Mithridate VI, pure copper and brass were used . Brass coins of Mithridates VI are the oldest known coins from this alloy. Pontic chasing has become widespread in the Eastern Mediterranean region.
Content
The development of Pontic coinage
Independent, mainly coastal cities founded by the Greeks were located on the lands of the future Pontic kingdom. The cities where mints existed were almost exclusively Greek colonies [2] .
Probably the first coin was minted during the reign of Mithridates II, it was copied from a coin with the image of Alexander the Great [3] [4] . By the end of the reign of Mithridates III (ca. 220 BC. E. - ca. 190 BC. E.) A significant amount of silver coin was in circulation. This was the first Pontic king whose portrait appeared on a coin [3] [4] .
Coins issued before the reign of Mithridates VI, came to our time in small quantities. This circumstance complicates the study of Pontic coinage [5] . At the same time, the problem of dating of coins is solved quite easily [6] . So, the coins minted by Mithridates VI (120-63 years BC), for the most part, have an indication not only for a year, but also for a month of release [7] .
The royal coins differed from the coins of the city coinage by the material — gold and silver were used for them, while the coins were coins made of copper. There was also a difference in pictorial motifs: the first was a portrait of the king and his name, the coin of the city on the reverse had his name [6] . Under Pharnack I, cities lost their autonomy and the right to mint coins. Mithridates VI restored the privilege of cities to have their own coins, but, as can be seen from the standardization of local coinage, it took place under the control of tsarist officials [2] .
A characteristic feature of Pontic coins is realistic, high-quality portrait images. Only Greek-Bactrian coinage is different in this realism. Greek masters were carvers of stamps for Pontic coins. The ruling dynasty of the kingdom in every way emphasized its Iranian origin, and the portraits of the rulers convey their oriental features. So, on one side of the Mithridates III coin is Zeus , holding an eagle, and on the other side is a non-idealized image of an elderly king with a beard and short hair [3] [4] [2] .
Pontius portrait developed away from the typical Hellenistic art [4] . Mithridates V became the first ruler of the Pontic kingdom, having received a relatively idealized image, perhaps this was dictated by the king’s desire to emphasize his Greek origin. The tendency manifested in the portrait images of the Pontic rulers was continued by his son Mithridates VI [2] .
The discovery in the Mediterranean of the Pontic coins belonging to the Late Hellenistic period points to the trading links of the kingdom with the lands adjacent to the sea. Coins of Pontic coinage are found in hoards with other Hellenistic coins. Such treasures were found in the Middle East and southeastern Anatolia . It is likely that Pontic money was widely distributed in the eastern Mediterranean region [6] .
Since the last decade of the II century BC. er Pontic kings established their authority in the Kingdom of Bosporus . In the area of the cities of the northern Black Sea coast, numerous treasures and individual finds of coins, mainly copper, of the city mines belonging to the period of Mithridates VI's rule were discovered. According to A. Zograf , an unprecedented number of the same type (for each nominal value is its own type) urban coins issued during the reign of this king can only be explained by active preparation for the war with Rome [8] .
Coins during the reign of Mithridates VI
Some researchers have suggested that the policy of Mithridates VI favored the development of the previously isolated cities of the Central Black Sea region. Mithridates gave the right to the most significant cities to mint their coins [6] [9] .
The images on the coins of Mithridates VI resemble portraits of Alexander the Great [9] . In the coin glyptic, the Pontic king is represented by a young man with wavy, like Alexander's, hair combed back, sideburns, a large nose and a narrow forehead. Mithridates coins belong to the late period, when the general Hellenistic tendency towards idealization was revealed in the portraits of the rulers [2] .
The most common motifs for coins of various denominations were a grazing animal ( Pegasus or deer) with a star and crescent, as well as ivy leaves and grapes. It was suggested that after the western lands were included in the Pontic kingdom, the image of Pegasus on the coins was replaced by a deer. This change could be politically motivated, as the mythological Pegasus is associated with Persia. Mithridates VI included scenes from the legend of Perseus in some coins, in order to emphasize that he was simultaneously the heir of Greece and Persia [10] [2] .
During the reign of Mithridates in the Asia Minor part of the kingdom, mostly golden staters and silver tetradrachms with the image of the king, as well as a small copper coin of the city coinage with the name of the cities in the singular and the genitive case, circulated [11] . At the beginning of his reign, probably also copper coins with denominations of obol and less went around, where either a leather helmet head was depicted, or (for smaller denominations) only a leather helmet. These unnamed coins with initials may have been issued by local rulers, subordinated to Mithridates, or royal governors [8] .
Unlike Ponte in the Bosporus in money circulation, gold and silver coins with the portrait of the king were few. Here and after joining the Pontic kingdom, the Lisimachus staters of Byzantine chasing continued to be used, new staters were also issued, where the images were given the features of Mithridates and his heirs. Silver Panticapaean drachmas remained in circulation, which were in circulation before the accession. The earliest coins issued by Panticapei during the reign of Mithridates are the obols, dated by the end of II - the beginning of the 1st c. BC e., with Poseidon on the obverse and the prop (the prow of the ship, the emblem of navigation and shipbuilding) on the reverse side, similar to Pontic obols with the head of Zeus and an eagle. The most common were medium coins - tetrahalki with an image on the front side of Artemis and a lying deer on the back, and Fanagoria also minted them. The smallest were the coins with the head of Athena and a trident on the back [8] .
Issues of coins in the first quarter of I century. BC er carried out all three major cities of Bosporus - Panticapaeum, Fanagoria, Gorgippia . This group includes silver didrachs with the head of a young Dionysus and the name of a city in a wreath of ivy, a drachma with images of Artemis and a running or grazing deer and triobola with Dionysus and thirs . Of the copper coins, the largest denomination was Obol with Men’s head on one side and Dionysus with a panther on the other, followed by a tetrahalk with the head of Apollo and a tripod with a tirce, the smallest with a star or wing on one side and a tripod on the back. Silver coins and two large denominations of copper had the same monogram, which some researchers (Gil) considered to be the Mithridates monogram [12] .
Copper and brass coins were widely used in the financing of Mithridates' military campaigns against Rome. Originally it was believed that the Romans were the first to issue brass coins. Known samples of the reign of Julius Caesar and Octavian Augustus (issued as a result of the monetary reform of 23 BC) [9] . Studies conducted in the 1970s showed that this rarely used alloy in the ancient world was used fifty years earlier for minting money by Mithridates VI, and it can be considered the first ruler using brass. Modern analyzes have shown that some of his coins, previously considered to be bronze , are actually made of brass [7] .
Notes
- ↑ Obverse and reverse, 2016 , p. 86-87.
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 5 6 D. Burcu Arıkan Erciyas. Pontus: The Settlements, Monuments, and His Predecessors . University of Cincinnati (2001). The appeal date is December 24, 2017.
- ↑ 1 2 3 (46) Pontos, Mithradates III . www2.lawrence.edu . The appeal date is December 24, 2017.
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 Otto Mørkholm. The Peace of Apamaea (336-188 BC) . - Cambridge University Press, 31 May 1991. - P. 131. - ISBN 978-0-521-39504-5 .
- Call de Callataÿ, François The First Royal Coinages of Pontos (from Mithridates III to Mithridates V) (Not available link) 63–94. The date of circulation is October 8, 2018. Archived September 29, 2018.
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 Deniz Burcu Erciyas. Wealth, Aristocracy and the Propaganda Underground . - BRILL, 2006. - P. 7. - ISBN 90-04-14609-1 .
- ↑ 1 2 William E. Metcalf. The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Coinage . - Oxford University Press, 5 January 2016. - P. 187–188. - ISBN 978-0-19-937218-8 .
- ↑ 1 2 3 Zograf, 1951 , p. 186.
- 2 1 2 3 Christodoulou, Stavros The Pontic Kingdom Under Mithridates VI . The appeal date is December 24, 2017.
- ↑ Appian claimed that Alexander the Great was a descendant of Perseus, and Herodotus - that Perseus was from Persia
- ↑ Zograf, 1951 , p. 185.
- ↑ Zograf, 1951 , p. 186-187.
Literature
- Obverse and reverse of history / [Ed. col .: A.V. Mityaeva et al.]. - M .: International Numismatic Club , 2016. - 216 p. - ISBN 978-5-9906902-6-4 .
- Zograf A.N. Antique coins. - M. —L .: Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1951.