Æ21 - Philip I ΦΩΚΑΙΕΩΝ

Phocaea's civic bronze coinage under Philip I belongs to a municipally administered series issued during the brief window when the emperor's attention — and patronage — was divided between the Danube frontier, the Persian threat, and the millennial celebrations of Rome in 248. Provincial mints in the Smyrna conventus operated with considerable autonomy during these years, and Phocaea, despite its diminished status relative to its archaic heyday as a Phocaean colonial power, maintained an uninterrupted civic bronze output through the mid-third century.

The conventus of Smyrna grouped western Lydian and Ionian cities under a single assize jurisdiction, but each retained the right to strike autonomous bronze for local exchange. This piece falls within the final phase of that privilege before civic coinage effectively collapsed across Asia Minor in the 260s.