Æ31 - Septimius Severus ΑΜΑϹΤΡΙΑΝΩΝ

Amastris was a Black Sea port city with an unusually self-conscious civic identity — it claimed foundation by Amastris, niece of the Persian king Darius III and wife (briefly) of Lysimachus, and the city cultivated that Hellenistic pedigree aggressively in its coinage throughout the imperial period. Issues under Septimius Severus coincide with the civil wars that brought him to power after the murder of Pertinax, and provincial mints across Bithynia and Pontus aligned quickly with his faction. The ΑΜΑϹΤΡΙΑΝΩΝ ethnic in the legend is the genitive plural — coins of the Amastrianoi — a formula this mint used consistently to assert civic, not merely imperial, authority over the issue.