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Stater - Rhescuporis V
| Issuer | Bosporan Kingdom |
|---|---|
| Year | 622 (326) |
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| Composition | Copper |
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| Obverse description | Diademed and draped bust of Rhescuporis V facing right, rendered in a provincial style characteristic of late Bosporan coinage. A trident symbol appears before the bust in the field. The encircling legend reads ΒΑCΙΛΕΩC ΡΗCΚΟΥΠΟΡΙC, identifying the issuing king. The portrait is set within a beaded border, with the diadem ribbons visible behind the head. |
|---|---|
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| Edge | Plain |
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| Additional information |
Rhescuporis V ruled the Bosporan Kingdom as a Roman client king during a period of acute instability on the northern Black Sea coast, when Gothic and Herulian pressure was dismembering Rome's Danubian frontier. By the 320s AD, the Bosporan electrum stater had been debased so thoroughly over generations that issues like this one — struck in essentially pure copper — retained the stater denomination in name only. The fiction of precious metal coinage had completely collapsed.
Anokhin's sequencing places this among the terminal issues of Rhescuporis V's reign, shortly before Bosporan royal coinage ceases altogether.