Æ23 - Septimius Severus ΦΙΛΟΜΗΛΕωΝ ΚΛ ΤΡΑΙΑ

Philomelium sat in the Phrygian interior, far enough from the Aegean coast that its civic bronze issues circulated in a genuinely local economy rather than competing with the denser monetary traffic of the western conventus cities. Severus's reign opened with civil war against Pescennius Niger and then Clodius Albinus, and provincial mints across Asia Minor — operating under the authority of their own civic magistrates — continued striking bronze largely undisturbed by those conflicts, their output governed by local demand rather than imperial directive.