Æ13 - Augustus

Ilium — the city built on or near the ruins of Troy — held a special ideological value for the Julio-Claudian dynasty, which traced its lineage through Aeneas directly to the Trojan royal house. Augustus visited the site, and the city enjoyed imperial favour partly on the strength of that mythological ancestry. This small civic bronze almost certainly circulated within that charged local economy, produced by a community that had every political reason to advertise its connection to Rome's founding narrative.