(BC 169-150) Mithradates IV - Tetradrachm

Mithradates IV, ca 170/169–150 BC. AR Tetradrachm (16.83g), struck in Sinope ca 169 BC. Diademed head right / ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ / ΜΙΘΡΑΔΑΤΟΥ - ΦΙΛΟΠΑΤΟΡΟΣ / ΚΑΙ ΦΙΛΑΔΕΛΦΟΥ, Perseus, naked but for cloak over his shoulders, standing facing and holding gorgoneion and harpa; monogram in lower left field. Extremely rare and among the finest specimens known. An elegant portrait of fine Hellenistic style struck in high relief on a very large flan. Old cabinet tone and aEF. Ex Leu sale 48 (1989), lot 209. From the von Aulock and Salvesen collections.

The reverse of this tetradrachm, which may perhaps predate Mithradates IV’s marriage to his sister, Laodike, depicts the hero Perseus. He appears here, not so much because Mithradates IV wanted to recall the myth of the hero, but because of an old Greek folk etymology that made Perseus an ancestor of the Persians. The Persian Great King Xerxes I (486-465 BC) was already aware of this etymology at the time of his invasion of mainland Greece (480 BC) and tried to use it to convince the Argives to capitulate. The link between Perseus and the Persians was deeply entrenched by 2nd century BC and Mithradates IV, who was himself of Iranian descent, used it to associate the Mithradatic dynasty of Pontus with the greatness of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. The irony of using a Greek hero to advertise a connection to an Iranian empire that was frequently in conflict with the states of Greece is palpable. This irony is further compounded by the otherwise conscious Hellenizing of the obverse type and legend: Mithradates IV wears the diadem of a Hellenistic king rather than the tiara of an Iranian ruler, and the reverse legend is entirely Greek in its use of titles like Philopator (”Father-loving”) and Philadelphos (”Brother-loving”). The combination of types and inscriptions on this tetradrachm is wonderfully schizophrenic in the desire to simultaneously tout Mithradates IV as an Iranian scion of the Persian Empire and as a Hellenistic king in emulation of Alexander the Great, the destroyer of that same empire.