Æ29 - Gallienus (sole reign) (ΕΠ ϹΤΡ ΑΥΡ ΦΡΟΝΤΩΝΟϹ ΜΑΓΝΗ ϹΙΠ)

Magnesia ad Sipylum sat at a geographic crossroads that made it strategically useful and administratively active throughout the imperial period, but civic bronze coinage from the city becomes markedly scarcer after the mid-third century. This piece falls within the sole reign of Gallienus, after 260 AD, when the capture of his father Valerian by Shapur I at the Battle of Edessa threw the Roman world into prolonged crisis. That provincial mints continued producing civic issues at all during these years reflects the stubborn persistence of local civic identity even as the empire fractured around them.