Æ - Socrates and Aristeides

Amorium was a Phrygian city that would later achieve notoriety as a major Byzantine stronghold, but in this earlier period it operated as a semi-autonomous civic mint under loose Attalid and then Roman provincial oversight. The decision to invoke Socrates and Aristeides — an Athenian philosopher and an Athenian statesman — on a Phrygian civic bronze is genuinely unusual, reflecting the deep cultural prestige these figures held across the Greek-speaking world long after Athens itself had ceased to be a political force.

Aristeides the Just died around 468 BC; the gap between his lifetime and this coin's production spans roughly four centuries.