Æ23 - Caracalla ϹΑΜΙΩΝ

Samos had been a free city under Roman administration since Augustus stripped it of that status briefly before restoring it — a political favor the island's elite remembered and cultivated. Provincial bronze of this conventus was struck locally under magistrates whose names occasionally survive on the coinage, though this issue carries only the civic ethnic ϹΑΜΙΩΝ, placing civic identity ahead of any individual magistrate's claim to prestige.