Æ22 - Philip I ΜΗΤΡΟΠΟΛΕΙΤΩΝ

Metropolis in Ionia was a minor city whose civic coinage under Philip I survived largely because of its status within the Ephesian conventus — the Roman judicial circuit that grouped smaller Ionian communities under Ephesus for administrative purposes. The city struck bronze issues sparingly, and the survival rate for this type is correspondingly low.

Philip came to power after engineering, or at least benefiting from, the death of Gordian III during the Mesopotamian campaign of 244. Provincial mints across the East struck his portrait in the immediate aftermath, many issues dating to that first year of his reign.