Æ20 - Nero ΚΑΡΥ

Carystus, on the southern tip of Euboea, was a minor Greek city whose civic coinage under Nero survives in frustratingly small numbers. The city was better known in antiquity for its quarries of cipollino marble — shipped across the empire for imperial building projects — than for any monetary output. That economic relationship with Rome likely explains why local elites bothered striking civic bronze at all during this period: a visible gesture of loyalty from a town whose real currency with the emperor was stone.