Æ20 - Septimius Severus ΑϹϹΙΩΝ

Assus — modern Behramkale on the Turkish Aegean coast — was a small polis of limited political weight by the Severan period, but provincial bronze of this kind was authorized and struck locally to meet everyday transaction needs that imperial silver rarely reached. The conventus of Adramyteum, one of the administrative districts of the Roman province of Asia, grouped Assus with neighboring communities for judicial and fiscal purposes under a travelling Roman magistrate.

Aristotle taught at Assus for three years in the 340s BC. The city was still coining on that reputation centuries later.