From the Mithridatic Wars to the Roman-Bosporan War of AD 45-49
This book examines the numismatic evidence of military payments in the Cimmerian Bosporus during the Late Hellenistic and Early Roman periods, from the Mithridatic Wars to the Roman-Bosporan War of AD 45-49. These are hoards discovered during excavations at the Bosporan cities and military settlements on the chora ( katoikiai , forts, towers), where mercenaries served. Such finds are the garrison treasury or salaries, mercenary purses, cash allowances for rations, money of katoikoi , etc. These hoards of a military context contain silver or bronze coinages, which were precisely used for pay soldiers (the opsonia , sitarchia , siteresion , sitonion ). Particular attention is paid to the Fontalovskaya 1963 hoard ( IGCH 1143 = CH XI, 137), containing about 1000 Dionysus/wreath didrachms bearing three city-names, Panticapaeum, Phanagoria and Gorgippia. It represents a salary of the garrison of either Fontalovskaya settlement, or Phanagoria, where the only garrison of foreign mercenaries is attested by an epigraphic source, the Phanagorian decree of 88/7 BC. Roman coins from the Artezian Fortress (Ptolemaeus’ Parosta?) are military booty of the party of Mithridates III, and those discovered in the barbarian sanctuaries near the Gurzufskoe Sedlo Pass and Eklizi-Burun (southern Crimea) along with Roman military equipment, jewellery, bronze statuettes from lararia , installed on Roman ships, details of Roman balance scales, etc., were the military booty of the Tauri. In Eklizi-Burun sanctuary, such objects and coins came in AD 49 from ships carrying Roman troops along the Crimean coast from Bosporus to Moesia Inferior, and were beached by storm on the coast of the Tauri and there plundered by local barbarians (Tacitus Annals 12.17), who then brought the trophies to the sanctuary and used them as votives.
