Æ22 - Gordian III ΜΑΓΝΗΤΩΝ

Magnesia ad Maeandrum was a city with an outsized sense of its own history — it claimed to have introduced the cult of Artemis Leucophryene to the Greek world and lobbied repeatedly, across centuries, for formal recognition of the sanctuary's inviolability. Bronze civic issues under Gordian III represent the tail end of the city's autonomous coinage tradition; within a generation, the broader collapse of the provincial bronze system under Gallienus would end such local issues across most of Asia Minor for good.