Sardis held the title of neokoros — warden of the imperial cult — twice by this period, a distinction aggressively competed for among cities of the Asian conventus and displayed prominently in civic coinage as a mark of Rome's formal favor. Elagabalus, whose brief and chaotic reign ended with his murder at eighteen, was nonetheless a productive period for provincial bronze issues across Asia Minor, as cities scrambled to court an unpredictable emperor whose religious eccentricities did nothing to slow the machinery of civic honorifics.
Sardis held the title of neokoros — warden of the imperial cult — twice by this period, a distinction aggressively competed for among cities of the Asian conventus and displayed prominently in civic coinage as a mark of Rome's formal favor. Elagabalus, whose brief and chaotic reign ended with his murder at eighteen, was nonetheless a productive period for provincial bronze issues across Asia Minor, as cities scrambled to court an unpredictable emperor whose religious eccentricities did nothing to slow the machinery of civic honorifics.