Æ18 - Valerian and Gallienus ϹΑΡΔΙΑΝΩΝ Γ ΝΕΩΚΟΡΩΝ

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.