Miletus by the second century AD was a city living on reputation. Once the dominant Greek polis of Ionia and the intellectual home of Thales, Anaximander, and the earliest philosophical tradition, it had never fully recovered from its destruction by the Persians in 494 BC nor from the progressive silting of its harbor, which had been strangling its commercial relevance for centuries. Provincial bronze of this size — a large civic issue — was authorized under a local magistrate, here almost certainly a strategos or grammateus whose partially legible name survives in the obverse legend.
The dating to 175–177 places this squarely within the co-regency of Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus, elevated to Augustus in 177.
Miletus by the second century AD was a city living on reputation. Once the dominant Greek polis of Ionia and the intellectual home of Thales, Anaximander, and the earliest philosophical tradition, it had never fully recovered from its destruction by the Persians in 494 BC nor from the progressive silting of its harbor, which had been strangling its commercial relevance for centuries. Provincial bronze of this size — a large civic issue — was authorized under a local magistrate, here almost certainly a strategos or grammateus whose partially legible name survives in the obverse legend.
The dating to 175–177 places this squarely within the co-regency of Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus, elevated to Augustus in 177.