Æ23 - Marcus Aurelius ΚΥΖΙΚΗΝΩΝ (Ζ may be shaped as reversed Ζ)

Cyzicus was among the most prolific bronze-issuing cities of the Mysian conventus under the Antonines, and its civic coinage under Marcus Aurelius spans a wide chronological range within the joint reign with Lucius Verus. The parenthetical note on the ethnic — a reversed Z in ΚΥΖΙΚΗΝΩΝ — is not mere copying error. Letter reversal in provincial bronze dies occurs when an engraver worked from an uninked model or transferred the design without mirroring, a workshop slip more diagnostic than it first appears.