Iranians and Greeks in South Russia - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian ...

INTHEROMANPERIOD 159
In the course of the second century, however, the enthusiasm for
vassalage dies down, and the types of the Bosphoran bronze sensibly
alter. Henceforth religious types predominate. At the end of the
second century the image of the Great Goddess reappears (pi. XXX,
3, second row, fig. 3) : it had already played a considerable part in
the coinage of Dynamis and her heirs and successors. The goddess
is figured in her Hellenized form, in the guise of Aphrodite. Further,
the martial representation of the king charging the enemy is gradually
replaced by another type, influenced by the statues of Roman
emperors from Marcus Aurelius onwards (pi. XXX, 3, first row,
fig, 4). The king, who is bearded, sits on a heavy charger, wearing
a corslet of scale armour, a flying cloak, trousers, and soft leather shoes:
a diadem encircles his head ; in his left hand he holds a long sceptre,
without the image of the emperor ; his right hand makes the gesture
of adoration, either to the supreme God, whose bust sometimes
appears, as a subsidiary type, on the same side of the coin ;
Great Goddess, who is regularly represented on the reverse.
or to the
A totally
new type, then, which bears witness to the thorough Iranization of
the dynasty, and to its increasing religiosity. The type recurs, at the
end of the second and the beginning of the third century, on gold
funerary crowns. The religious and political character of these
representations is even more strongly marked than on the coins. I
have republished these crowns, with a commentary, in a special
treatise : we
shall return to them.
We have every reason to suppose that the power of the king was
absolute. There is no evidence that the Greek citizens of the kingdom
had any share in the government. The administration, also, is purely
monarchical. The king was surrounded by a court, the members of
which bore pompous. Oriental titles. It was the courtiers who filled
the public posts, who acted as military governors in the provinces, as
financial officers, and the like. The system of administration was
probably modelled on those of the Iranian kingdoms, the Parthian, the
Armenian and the rest. It was very likely inherited from Mithridates
the Great. Roman influence can occasionally be traced : for instance
in the creation, during the Trajanic period, of a kind of praetorian
prefect or, let us say, grand vizier.
The social and economic system had not greatly altered since the
later Spartocid period. Two classes are to be distinguished. On the
one hand, the governing class, the citizen aristocracy, which served
at court and in the army, and which provided the king with agents
and officials : landed proprietors, merchants, owners of industrial
establishments. On the other, the governed, the serfs and slaves.