Æ14 - Domitian L Ι

Year 10 of Domitian's reign in Egypt — Ennealitros L Ι — places this piece squarely within the period following his Domitianic "terror," when senatorial opposition had been brutally suppressed and the emperor governed with increasingly autocratic control. Egyptian bronze issues of this weight class circulated as the smallest fractional denomination in the Alexandrian system, absorbed into daily transactions at the lowest economic tier. The posthumous damnatio memoriae declared by the Senate after Domitian's assassination in 96 AD means contemporary inscriptions bearing his name were systematically defaced — these small bronzes survived largely because nobody bothered.