Æ28 - Commodus ΕΠΙ ϹΤΡ ΙΟΥ ΦΑΥϹΤΟΥ ΤΟ Β ΚΟΛΟΦΩΝΙΩΝ

The magistrate named in this coin's legend — Iou. Phaustos — held the strategia of Colophon twice, the ΤΟ Β notation confirming his second term. Colophon by this period was effectively the ghost of its classical self; the city had been systematically depopulated by Lysimachus around 299 BC when he forcibly transferred its inhabitants to his newly founded Ephesus. The Roman-era city that issued this bronze was a diminished but still functioning civic entity, minting under the Ephesian conventus as a mark of administrative belonging rather than genuine metropolitan standing.