Æ21 - Commodus Α ΑΥΡΗ

Carrhae occupies an uncomfortable place in Roman memory — it was where Crassus met his end in 53 BC, and where Caracalla would later be murdered in 217 AD. The city's civic coinage under Commodus belongs to a period when provincial mints across the eastern empire were asserting local identity through bronze issues, largely because Rome showed little interest in supplying the region with adequate small-change currency.

The abbreviated obverse legend Α ΑΥΡΗ — a compressed rendering of Marcus Aurelius — reflects the hurried, informal epigraphy typical of Carrhae's die-cutters, whose work was never refined.