Æ21 - Trajan ΘΕΟΝ ϹΕΒΑϹΤΟΝ ΠΕΡΓΑ

Pergamum held the title of neokoros — official keeper of the imperial cult — multiple times over, a distinction it competed for aggressively against rival cities like Smyrna and Ephesus. The honorific ΘΕΟΝ ϹΕΒΑϹΤΟΝ, applied here to Trajan, reflects that institutional machinery at work: the city's bronze coinage functioned partly as a public declaration of cultic loyalty to Rome, circulating that allegiance through everyday transactions across the conventus.