Here's yet another
Alexander post...
Some of the very late Black Sea Alexanders depict what most numismatists regard as a
portrait of Mithradates the Great because of the similarity between the
portrait and other coins of Mithradates VI. The issue I've been looking into are somewhat earlier Alexander-type tetradrachms from
Mesembria and
Odessos that depict a "fat
Herakles." These coins can be attributed as
Price 1039-1101 and 1177-1181 and as
Karayotov 232-680.
The
portrait on these diverges so greatly from the traditional
Herakles that I believe it may well depict a local Thracian dynast, though I could find no evidence of this and I've yet to find even any discussion in the literature of this as a possibility, with the one exception being a 1968
Numismatic Chronicle article by
Martin Price in which he says that the
portrait is "possibly a local ruler" (I'm not able to read material written in
Bulgarian and other languages in which this possibility may have been discussed).
These coins are dated 175-65 BC, according to
Price, and 175-100 BC, according to Ivan
Karayotov in
his 1994 book The Coinage of Mesambria. Kotys II (sometimes referred to as Kotys) was
king of the Odrysae, the most powerful Thracian tribe, during the second century BC. He allied with Perseas/Perseus of
Macedonia in its war against
Rome. He's known to have minted bronze coins, according to Yordanka
Youroukova in
his 1974 monograph Coins of the Ancient Thracians.
How about this as a possibility: Perhaps these "fat
Herakles" tetradrachms depicted Kotys as
Herakles just as later Black Sea Alexanders depicted Mithradates as
Herakles. Mithradates fought the
Romans, the last Hellenistic ruler to do so, just as Kotys did earlier. Perhaps the "fat
Herakles" design was used as a
type during and after Kotys' reign.
There's some additional variation in the
portraits of Black Sea tetradrachms after these "fat
Herakles"
types and before the Mithradates
types, so perhaps one or more other Thracian dynasts are depicted on some of these latter coins as well, with one possibility being Mostis, who reigned during the late second and early first centuries BC, is also known to have minted coinage, and also fought the
Romans.
Any of this sound credible?