Æ ΑΡΙΣΤΙΩΝ

Aristion served as a Cretan magistrate whose name appears on a small group of late Republican-era bronzes from Cnossus, a city that had been refounded as a Roman colony — Colonia Iulia Nobilis Cnossus — following Rome's annexation of Crete in 67 BC. The colonial reorganization brought Roman administrative structures into contact with surviving Hellenistic minting traditions, producing issues that sit awkwardly between Greek civic coinage and Roman provincial output. Svoronos documented this type among his foundational survey of Cretan coinage, and the magistrate series to which this piece belongs remains poorly understood in terms of precise sequencing.