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Æ18 - Valerian and Gallienus ϹΑΡΔΙΑΝΩΝ Γ ΝΕΩΚΟΡΩΝ
| Issuer | Sardes (Conventus of Sardis) |
|---|---|
| Year | 253-268 |
| Type | Standard circulation coin |
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| Obverse description | Draped and turreted bust of the city-goddess Sardis facing right, wearing a mural crown with multiple battlements, her drapery rendered in fine folds at the shoulder. The legend ϹΑΡΔΙϹ appears in the field around the bust, distributed on either side. The portrait is executed in the provincial Greek civic style characteristic of the Lydian mint under the joint reign of Valerian and Gallienus, framed by a beaded border. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse script | Greek |
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Sardis held the title of neokoros — official guardian of an imperial cult temple — three times over, a distinction that civic authorities advertised aggressively on bronze coinage throughout the joint reign of Valerian and Gallienus. The Γ (gamma) designating third-time status was a point of municipal pride in a city that had been competing with Smyrna, Ephesus, and Pergamon for honorific precedence since the Antonine period. That rivalry was fought as much through coinage as through embassy to Rome.
Sardis had been refounded with imperial patronage after the catastrophic earthquake of 17 AD, which left Tiberius the political credibility to remake the city — and the gratitude that eventually underwrote its first neokorate.