Æ28 - Marcus Aurelius C I F SINOPE A (N) CCVII (V shaped as U)

Sinope, the Black Sea colony founded by Miletus, had been a Roman colonia since Julius Caesar's resettlement of it in 45 BC — one of his last colonial foundations before his assassination. The city retained its colonial dating era from that refoundation, making the CCVII figure in the legend a consular year calculable from 45 BC. That places this coin squarely in the co-reign of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, when the eastern empire was stretched thin by the Parthian War and a devastating plague the returning troops carried back through Anatolia.