Æ24 - Septimius Severus ΕΚΤΩΡ ΙΛΙΕΩΝ

Ilium — the city built atop the ruins of Troy — maintained a civic identity inseparable from its Homeric heritage throughout the imperial period, and this issue makes that explicit. The city held special status under several emperors: Augustus had considered making it the capital of the empire, according to Suetonius, and the Julio-Claudians cultivated its mythology aggressively. By the Severan period that political utility had faded, but Ilium still leveraged its legendary past in bronze coinage aimed at local prestige rather than wide circulation.

The Conventus of Adramyteum administered a coastline thick with cities competing for imperial favor through exactly this kind of mythologically charged civic coinage.