KINGS OF SKYTHIA. Pharzoios, circa 45-77. Aureus (Gold, 21 mm, 6.54 g, 12 h), a contemporary imitation of fine quality, after 63/4. BA - Φ Diademed Roman-style head to right; behind, monogram; before, caduceus. Rev. ΦAPZOIOV (retrograde) / AΦΛ Eagle with spread wings standing to right on a thunderbolt. For the prototype see Anokhin 589; Karyshkovskij p. 284, 458, pl. XXI = C, 13; and Triton XXI, 9 January 2018, 373. Extremely rare. Clear and with completely legible legends. A few light marks, otherwise, good very fine.

From a German private collection owned since a generation.

This deeply fascinating coin compounds rarity with rarity. Not only is it a unique and rather charming imitative piece, possibly produced by the Celtic, Germanic and Dacian peoples along the Lower Danube, but it takes as its model the extremely rare aurei struck at Olbia by an obscure, but evidently powerful, Sarmatian king named Pharzoios. The obverse type of the diademed head with a caduceus before is the usual obverse type for the aurei of Pharzaios, although on the imitation the engraver has decided to add the control monogram usually found on the reverse and the retrograde legend BA Φ (surely the abbreviation of BAΣIΛEΩΣ ΦAPZOIOY?). The reverse features a rather more stylized version of the eagle on a thunderbolt usually found on the coinage of Pharzaios and a gloriously retrograde inscription naming the Sarmatian king, but without the royal title. The three additional letters at the top of the reverse may perhaps be a garbled version of the Olbian mintmark. Unusually for an imitation, however, the engraver got the inscription perfectly right.

While it is not out of the question that an official aureus of Pharzaios could have traveled west through trade, it seems more likely that it reached Celtic, Germanic, or Dacian lands through the western migrations of the Sarmatian peoples. By the mid-first century AD, the Sarmatian Roxolani and Iazyges had reached the Lower Danube, where they interacted with the local cultures and began raiding into Roman territory. It is in this sort of cosmopolitan environment that a Pharzaios aureus might have been seen and imitated by an engraver who was not a worker at the mint of Olbia and probably not a Sarmatian either.