Æ30 - Domitian L ΙΑ

Year 11 of Domitian's reign — the year this coin was struck — fell squarely within the period historians would later call his reign of terror, when senatorial executions accelerated and the emperor demanded to be addressed as *dominus et deus*. Provincial bronze from Alexandria was the everyday money of Roman Egypt, a province the emperor kept under direct personal control, barred from senatorial governance since Augustus first seized it in 30 BC. The Alexandrian mint dated its issues by regnal year, making attribution unusually precise compared to Roman provincial coinage elsewhere.