Æ23 - Trajan Decius ΦΛ ΦΙΛΑΔΕΛΦΕΩΝ ΝΕΩΚΟΡΩΝ

Philadelphia in Lydia held the title of neokoros — temple warden of the imperial cult — a distinction cities competed for aggressively through the second and third centuries, as it conferred both prestige and economic benefit from pilgrims and festival traffic. Under Trajan Decius, whose reign lasted barely two years before he fell to the Goths at Abritus in 251 AD, provincial bronze issues like this one represent some of the last civic coinage Philadelphia struck before the broader collapse of city-mint production across Asia Minor later in the third century.