Æ36 - Marcus Aurelius ϹΤΡΑΤΗΓ ΤΩΝ ΠΕΡΙ ΖΩϹΙΜΟΝ Δ ΦΙΛΟΠΑΤΟΡΑ ΚΟΛ (Ϲ)ϹΗΝΩΝ

Colossae had been a declining city for centuries by the time this coin was struck — Strabo had already written it off as a small town by the first century AD, its commercial importance long since eclipsed by neighboring Laodicea and Hierapolis. That a city of such reduced standing was still producing large civic bronzes under Marcus Aurelius speaks to the administrative persistence of the Conventus of Cibyra, which grouped otherwise marginal Phrygian communities under a shared judicial circuit. The strategoi named in the legend — the Zosimos family holding a fourth-term magistracy with the epithet Philopatora — were likely local benefactors funding the issue directly.