Æ19 - Valerian and Gallienus COL (A) - TRO

Alexandria Troas held colonial status under Rome from the time of Augustus, and its mint produced bronze coinage intermittently through the imperial period — not as a provincial necessity but as a civic privilege, issuing under the names of emperors who would never visit the site. The joint reign of Valerian and Gallienus, father and son ruling simultaneously from 253, generated a distinctive class of colonial bronzes across Asia Minor that collapsed abruptly when Valerian was captured by Shapur I at the Battle of Edessa in 260, the only Roman emperor taken prisoner by a foreign enemy.