Exceptional Hellenistic Art
KINGS of PONTOS. Mithradates VI Eupator. Circa 120-63 BC. AR Tetradrachm (35mm, 16.79 g, 11h). Pergamon mint. Dated month 1 of 213 BE (October, 85 BC). Diademed head right, hair tousled and freely flowing /
BASILEWS MIQRADATOU EUPATOROS, stag grazing left; star-in-crescent and monogram to left,
GIS (year) and monogram to right, A (month) in exergue; all within Dionysiac wreath of ivy and fruit. Callataÿ p. 17-8, dies D5/R4; RG 16, pl. II, 15 (same obv. die); SNG Copenhagen -; Hunterian 3 (same dies). Superb EF, wonderful gray toning with dark iridescent hues.
From the Semon Lipcer Collection.
Mithradates is the Hellenistic monarch par excellence, his career driven by megalomaniacal ambitions leading to murderous assaults upon family and followers and disastrous foreign adventures against superior forces. His idealized portraiture attempts to mimic the gods with its bold staring gaze and unruly, free-flowing hair, but at its most extreme is a personification of hysteria in its Dionysiac sense. The wreath of ivy on the reverse reinforces Mithradates' link with the god as well as making a connection with the cistaphoric coinage that circulated in the area. The stag probably represents the civic center of Ephesos and the mintmark is of Pergamon, all part of the new Pontic kingdom, symbolized by the star and crescent. His empire collapsed before the armies of Sulla and Lucullus, and Mithradates ended his own life an exile in the far region of the Crimea, pursued to the end by vengeful Romans and family.
