The misspelling in the colonial title — PLLA rather than PELA — is not a modern cataloguer's error but an engraver's, preserved in the die itself. Pella's colonial coinage under Gordian III was modest in volume, and the survival of variants with this specific blunder suggests it was never corrected mid-production. The colony, refounded by Augustus on the site of the Macedonian royal capital, retained its honorary titulature through the third century largely by civic inertia rather than any ongoing imperial favour.
The misspelling in the colonial title — PLLA rather than PELA — is not a modern cataloguer's error but an engraver's, preserved in the die itself. Pella's colonial coinage under Gordian III was modest in volume, and the survival of variants with this specific blunder suggests it was never corrected mid-production. The colony, refounded by Augustus on the site of the Macedonian royal capital, retained its honorary titulature through the third century largely by civic inertia rather than any ongoing imperial favour.