Philomelion occupied a strategically useful position on the road between Apameia and Ikonion in Phrygia, which is precisely why Rome absorbed it so efficiently after Attalos III bequeathed Pergamon to the Republic in 133 BC. The city's civic bronze coinage — this series among them — continued under the new provincial arrangement of Asia, one of dozens of Phrygian communities permitted to strike small-denomination bronze for local exchange while Roman administrators extracted the region's agricultural surplus.
The magistrate name partially preserved in this type's attribution reflects the Greek administrative class that persisted through the transition intact.
Philomelion occupied a strategically useful position on the road between Apameia and Ikonion in Phrygia, which is precisely why Rome absorbed it so efficiently after Attalos III bequeathed Pergamon to the Republic in 133 BC. The city's civic bronze coinage — this series among them — continued under the new provincial arrangement of Asia, one of dozens of Phrygian communities permitted to strike small-denomination bronze for local exchange while Roman administrators extracted the region's agricultural surplus.
The magistrate name partially preserved in this type's attribution reflects the Greek administrative class that persisted through the transition intact.