If you love your mother so much, why don't you just marry her?

Another coin from my backlog, and one that will definitely show up on my year-end list soon:

Parthian Kingdom. Susa mint. Billon drachm (18 mm, 3.64 g). Phraatakes, with his queen/mother Musa (c.1-4 AD). Obverse: Diademed bust of king left, Nikes before and behind. Reverse: Bust of queen wearing tall crown and diadem left, [palm-branch before], slightly blundered Greek legend around "Basil[isses Theas Mous] [sic]" (Of the Queen and Goddess Musa). Sellwood 58.11. This coin: Pars Coins Auction 3, lot 171 (October 9, 2019).

In 20 BC, as a symbol of goodwill while they were negotiating a peace treaty, the Roman Emperor Augustus sent the Parthian king Phraates IV an Italian slave girl named Musa as a concubine. Musa seems to have been very beautiful and charming, and also proved to be ambitious and politically savvy. She soon bore Phraates a son who was nicknamed Phraatakes ("little Phraates") and she was promoted from concubine to wife. In 10 BC, she persuaded Phraates to send his older sons off to Rome to learn Roman ways, to serve as reassurance to Rome that Parthia was still friendly... and not so incidentally, to ensure that Phraatakes was the only heir to the throne still present in Parthian territory. In 2 BC, Phraatakes and Musa conspired to poison Phraates, and Phraatakes took the throne. Sadly, this was hardly unprecedented, as both Phraatakes' father and grandfather had taken power by murdering their own fathers. He then tried to assert Parthian influence in Armenia (again, hardly unusual for a Parthian king) by aiding a pro-Parthian faction against the Roman-supported king Artavasdes. This alarmed Augustus, who dispatched his grandson Gaius Caesar to Syria to handle the situation. Phraatakes wrote a rather rude letter to Augustus, who responded equally rudely to him, and war seemed inevitable. However, in 1 BC Gaius Caesar and Phraatakes met in person on an island in the middle of the Euphrates, and were able to defuse the situation. Phraatakes withdrew his support for the Armenian faction, in exchange for continued peace with Rome.

Phraatakes was known to depend heavily on his mother, and most likely in 1 AD he took the further step of marrying her. While some previous Parthian kings and nobles had married their own sisters, marrying his own mother was definitely not accepted. While it is possible that the marriage was strictly a political convenience and never consummated, it was certainly not in line with how the Parthians expected their king to act. Whether it was due to disgust at Phraatakes' apparent incest, distrust of his reliance on a woman as co-ruler, or simple political jealousy, a group of nobles rose up and overthrew Phraatakes in 4 AD, and he was killed shortly afterwards. Musa simply disappears from history at this point- without her son/husband, she was just a woman and thus of no importance.

This coin is from the mint of Susa. While Susa was a very ancient and important city in south-west Iran, and most Parthian kings from Phraates II (138-127 BC) to Gotarzes II (40-51 AD) struck coins there, the number of coins struck there was usually small and represented only a small portion of the king's total coin output. This coin is struck in billon, which is usual for later Parthian issues from this mint. Sometime in the middle to late 1st century AD, Susa switched over to minting coins for Elymais, and by this point the coins were bronze without any silver at all. Also usual for Susa, the design is a bit cruder than seen at other mints, and the legend more blundered. While this specimen is not a great beauty, it is a scarce and interesting relic of a fascinating time in history, and a reminder of a fascinating woman (and the only queen ever portrayed on Parthian coinage). Please post your coins of Phraatakes and Musa, or Phraatakes alone, or whatever else you can justify.

 

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An awesome coin with a very cool history, don't see women on Parthians much. Lucky.

 

@Mat always like those Women-folk in history, especially if they were evil!

 

A hard coin to find with an interesting story - I can see why it would be top 10 - Congratulations! If you exclude female deities (like Nike below) I don't think there were any other women on Parthian coins. I have no Musa to add (other than Pomponius Musa which is not the most relevant coin for this thread), always happy to show this coin: Phraataces Shore 317

 

Not sure if it's Parthia, perse, but I have seen coins of Kamnaskires III and Anzaze.

 

Antigone........you'll put your eye (eyes) out.

 

Although I sold off most of my Parthian drachms a couple years back, I couldn't part with this one. One of the few drachms I just had to hold on to.

Phraataces and Musa, Sellwood 58.9

 

Interesting story @Parthicus, thanks for posting! I am not into Parthian coinage (except when it involves around a roman emperor) though, so i cant contribute a coin.