Kinzer Coins

Amisos Ancient Greek Bronze Coin — Medusa under Mithradates VI (120–63 BC) — NGC Certified

Name: Amisos Ancient Greek Bronze Coin — Medusa under Mithradates VI (120–63 BC) — NGC Certified
Brand: Kinzer Coins
Price: 97.0 USD
Availability: InStock

Amisos Ancient Greek Bronze Coin — Medusa under Mithradates VI (120–63 BC) — NGC Certified

$97.00 USD

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Amisos Bronze with Medusa — Coinage from the Age of Mithridates VI

Own a Coin from the Pontic Kingdom That Challenged Rome

A genuine NGC-certified bronze coin from Amisos, issued during the age of Mithridates VI Eupator and featuring the Gorgon Medusa and Nike.

✓ NGC Certified
✓ Guaranteed Authentic
✓ 30-Day Returns

📷 Photos show representative examples. You will receive one authentic NGC-certified bronze coin of this Amisos type. Each ancient coin is unique and will vary in centering, strike, patina, wear, and surface characteristics.

🐍 Features the facing head of Medusa, one of the Greek world’s best-known apotropaic images
🏛 Issued at Amisos during the period of Pontic power under Mithridates VI
🪽 Reverse depicts Nike, the Greek personification of victory

Own This Piece of History

Why This Coin Matters

Mithridates VI Eupator ruled Pontus from approximately 120 to 63 BC and became one of the Roman Republic’s most formidable opponents.

This bronze type was struck at Amisos, an important Black Sea city within the Pontic kingdom. Its imagery belongs firmly to the Hellenistic Greek visual tradition.

The obverse shows the facing head of the Gorgon Medusa. Gorgoneia had long been used throughout the Greek world as apotropaic images—symbols intended to repel danger or evil—and appeared on architecture, armor, shields, and coinage.

The reverse depicts Nike, the personification of victory, holding a palm branch. Victory imagery was widespread in Greek coinage and naturally carried positive associations with success and triumph. The type is especially evocative when viewed against Mithridates’ military career, but the coin itself does not prove that Nike was selected as a specific declaration of an intended victory over Rome.

Beginning in 89/88 BC, Mithridates fought Rome in the first of three conflicts known as the Mithridatic Wars. Roman commanders including Sulla, Lucullus, and Pompey eventually confronted him in a struggle that lasted decades and transformed the political order of Asia Minor and the Black Sea region.

Coins like this circulated within the Pontic economic world during that turbulent era. Their Greek gods and mythological imagery also reflect the strongly Hellenized culture of Mithridates’ kingdom.

This Medusa and Nike bronze offers an accessible connection to one of the most dramatic rivalries of the late Hellenistic age without assigning a specific political message to the design that the surviving evidence cannot prove.