Æ24 - Marcus Aurelius COL AVG TROAD

Alexandria Troas, a Roman colony founded under Augustus on the site of earlier Antigoneia, held the rare privilege of issuing colonial bronze coinage denominated in its own civic series rather than the provincial system. By 179 AD, Marcus Aurelius was in the final year of the Marcomannic Wars, campaigning on the Danube frontier where he would die the following spring. Colonial issues from this conventus — the judicial district centered on Adramyteum — were struck with considerable autonomy, and the COL AVG TROAD legend reflects the city's pride in its Augustan colonial charter, still invoked on bronze nearly two centuries after the original foundation.