Colophon by the mid-third century was a city running largely on prestige borrowed from an earlier age — its famous oracle of Apollo at Claros drew visitors from across the Greek-speaking world, which gave local magistrates genuine reason to keep issuing civic bronze even as imperial coinage crowded the market. The strategos Flavius Agathokles, named in the obverse legend, was a local magistrate whose name appears on a small and closely related group of Colophonian issues datable to Trajan Decius's short reign. That reign ended at the Battle of Abritus in 251, making the civic bronze of this precise magistracy one of the last Colophon ever struck.
Colophon by the mid-third century was a city running largely on prestige borrowed from an earlier age — its famous oracle of Apollo at Claros drew visitors from across the Greek-speaking world, which gave local magistrates genuine reason to keep issuing civic bronze even as imperial coinage crowded the market. The strategos Flavius Agathokles, named in the obverse legend, was a local magistrate whose name appears on a small and closely related group of Colophonian issues datable to Trajan Decius's short reign. That reign ended at the Battle of Abritus in 251, making the civic bronze of this precise magistracy one of the last Colophon ever struck.