Æ25 - Severus Alexander COL AVG (or AV AXAND, sic) TROAC (sic)

Alexandria Troas, a Roman colony founded under Augustus on the site of Antigonia, was one of the few cities in the Troas region to hold full colonial status with the *ius Italicum* — a fiscal privilege that exempted its citizens from provincial land and poll taxes. That standing is almost certainly why the city's bronze issues under Severus Alexander are so assertive in their colonial titulature, even when the die-cutters abbreviated or misspelled it. The garbled legends on this type — AV AXAND and TROAC among them — are not random errors; they reflect local workshop practice and are consistent enough across specimens to be die-specific rather than accidental.