Æ20 - Trajan ΑΝΔΡΟΚΛΟϹ ΚΟΡΗϹΟϹ ΕΦΕ

Ephesus mint activity under Trajan coincided with the city's peak as the largest Roman metropolis in Asia Minor and seat of the conventus juridicus — the regional assize court where the governor dispensed Roman justice. The legend invoking Androclus, the mythological Athenian founder of Ephesus, was a deliberate assertion of civic prestige, the city leaning hard on its foundation myth at a moment when rivalry with Smyrna and Pergamon for the title of "first city of Asia" was genuinely contested.