Drachm - Phraates V

Phraates V — also known as Phraataces — came to power after conspiring with his mother Musa, a former Italian slave-girl gifted to Phraates IV by Augustus, to murder his own father. The Roman diplomatic entanglement ran deep: Musa had leveraged her position at the Parthian court partly through the same Augustus who had spent years negotiating the return of the Roman standards captured at Carrhae in 53 BC. Sellwood 57.13 places this drachm squarely within that uneasy peace.

Phraates V was eventually expelled from Parthia around 4 AD, reportedly because the aristocracy found the mother-son co-regency — and probable marriage — intolerable.