Æ19 - Marcus Aurelius ϹΥΡΙωΝ (all retrograde)

Syros — the Aegean island best known in antiquity for its role in the Cycladic trade network — produced a modest civic bronze coinage under Roman imperial authority, and this piece belongs to a small, poorly documented group issued during the co-reign of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. The fully retrograde ethnic is not a die-cutter's error in any casual sense; retrograde legends appear with enough consistency on certain Syrian and island Greek bronzes to suggest either a deliberate local convention or a workshop tradition using mirror-cut dies without correction.

RPC IV.2 #4711 remains unparalleled in several major collections, with very few specimens recorded.