Æ18 - Trajan Decius ϹΑΜΙΩΝ

Samos issued bronze coinage under Roman administration as part of the Miletus conventus — one of the judicial districts into which the province of Asia was divided. The city retained the right to strike local bronze through the third century, though by the reign of Trajan Decius that privilege was increasingly nominal, with imperial pressures and the ongoing Gothic wars draining provincial resources. Decius himself died at the Battle of Abrittus in 251 AD, making his reign one of the shortest among the soldier-emperors.

IX#700 places this among a well-catalogued sequence for the Samian civic issues of this period.