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Æ29 - Gordian III ΠΥΘΙΑ ΟΛΥΜΠΙΑ, ΕΠΙ ΓΡ ΦΙΛΙΠΠΟΥ ΚΕΝΤΑ ΤΡΑΛΛΙΑΝΩΝ
| Issuer | Tralles (Conventus of Ephesus) |
|---|---|
| Year | 238-244 |
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| Shape | Round (irregular) |
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| Obverse description | Draped and diademed bust of Empress Tranquillina facing right, her hair elaborately coiffed and bound with a diadem, wearing a paludamentum or robes with visible drapery folds at the shoulder. The effigy is rendered in the provincial style characteristic of Lydian civic coinage of the mid-third century AD. The Greek legend encircles the bust within the field. |
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| Reverse script | Greek |
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The ΠΥΘΙΑ ΟΛΥΜΠΙΑ legend signals that this coin was issued to commemorate a combined festival at Tralles conflating the Pythian and Olympic games — a local prestige project in which Asian cities competed aggressively for the right to host "assimilated" versions of the great Panhellenic contests. The magistrate name Φίλιππος Κεντᾶς appears on a tight cluster of issues from Gordian's reign, anchoring this piece to a specific administrative moment in the city's civic calendar.
Tralles sat in the Maeander valley and answered to the Ephesian conventus for judicial and administrative purposes. The city had long cultivated imperial favor — it rebuilt lavishly after a devastating earthquake under Augustus — and the competitive festival coinage of the third century was a continuation of that same municipal ambition.