Æ16 - Antoninus Pius ΕΠΙ ϹΤΡΑ ΒΑΧΥΛΟ (sic)

The magistrate name rendered on this coin — ΕΠΙ ϹΤΡΑ ΒΑΧΥΛΟ — is a garbled abbreviation, almost certainly for a strategos whose name was Bacchylus or a close variant, the engraver either working from a poorly transcribed model or simply unfamiliar with the full form. Erythrae, an Ionian city on the coast opposite Chios, maintained its own civic bronze coinage under Roman supervision throughout the Antonine period, the strategoi rotating as eponymous magistrates in a tradition reaching back centuries before the province of Asia was formally organized.