Provincia Dacia was a Roman administrative creation as much as a geographic one, and its coinage — running annually from AN I through AN V under a sequence of emperors — was among the most explicitly calendar-based provincial issues Rome ever produced. The AN IIII notation marks this as a fourth-year piece within that numbered series, struck under Trajan Decius, the Danubian general who seized the throne in 249 after defeating Philip the Arab at Verona.
Decius died at the Battle of Abrittus in 251, somewhere in the Dobrudja region — essentially within the province whose coinage he appears on.
Provincia Dacia was a Roman administrative creation as much as a geographic one, and its coinage — running annually from AN I through AN V under a sequence of emperors — was among the most explicitly calendar-based provincial issues Rome ever produced. The AN IIII notation marks this as a fourth-year piece within that numbered series, struck under Trajan Decius, the Danubian general who seized the throne in 249 after defeating Philip the Arab at Verona.
Decius died at the Battle of Abrittus in 251, somewhere in the Dobrudja region — essentially within the province whose coinage he appears on.