Æ23 - Hadrian ΑΡΤΕΜΙϹ ΕΦΕϹΙΑ

Ephesus held the title neokoros — warden of the imperial cult temple — multiple times over, and civic bronze issues like this one served partly as assertions of that status during Hadrian's reign, a period when the emperor actively courted the Greek east through monumental building programs and personal philhellenism. Hadrian visited Ephesus directly, and the city leveraged his patronage aggressively in its rivalries with Smyrna and Pergamon over provincial precedence.

The Artemision at Ephesus remained one of the most economically significant religious institutions in the Roman world, functioning as a bank and sanctuary simultaneously.