Æ28 - Antoninus Pius CERERIS COL LVSTRA

Lystra's civic bronze coinage under Antoninus Pius reflects the city's unusual status as a Roman colonia — a designation it had held since Augustus settled veterans there, likely from the legions demobilized after Actium. Colonial rank entitled Lystra to use Latin legends and Roman iconographic vocabulary on its coinage, a privilege that distinguishes its issues sharply from the Greek-language civic bronzes of neighboring Galatian towns.

The Ceres association encoded in this issue's legend ties directly to the colonial ideology: Ceres was the Roman deity of grain and colonial foundation ritual, invoked at the lustration ceremonies that ritually purified and renewed the colonial community. The specific pairing of her cult with a lustration reference on a provincial bronze is uncommon enough to make this a genuinely useful document for reconstructing local religious practice.