Æ30 - Marcus Aurelius ΔΙΑ ΙΔΑΙΟΝ ΙΛΙΕΙϹ

Ilium — the city built atop the ruins of Troy — leveraged its mythological identity aggressively under the Antonines, issuing bronzes that anchored Roman imperial legitimacy to the Trojan founding narrative. Marcus Aurelius, as a sitting emperor rather than a caesar, received particular civic attention from Asian mints in the years following his co-emperor Lucius Verus's death in 169. The magistrate name encoded in the obverse legend, ΔΙΑ ΙΔΑΙΟΝ, identifies a local official otherwise unattested in the epigraphic record.