Samos struck bronze coinage under its own civic authority throughout the imperial period, but the sole reign of Gallienus — following the capture of his father Valerian by Shapur I in 260 AD — marked a period of acute administrative strain across the eastern provinces. The Conventus of Miletus, the judicial district under which Samian civic issues fell, continued producing local bronze even as the central Roman mint system fractured under the pressures of the Crisis of the Third Century.
Civic bronze from Samos dried up entirely within a decade of this issue, as the collapse of civic coinage across Asia Minor accelerated through the 260s.
Samos struck bronze coinage under its own civic authority throughout the imperial period, but the sole reign of Gallienus — following the capture of his father Valerian by Shapur I in 260 AD — marked a period of acute administrative strain across the eastern provinces. The Conventus of Miletus, the judicial district under which Samian civic issues fell, continued producing local bronze even as the central Roman mint system fractured under the pressures of the Crisis of the Third Century.
Civic bronze from Samos dried up entirely within a decade of this issue, as the collapse of civic coinage across Asia Minor accelerated through the 260s.