This homonoia issue documents a formal alliance between Ephesus and Magnesia ad Maeandrum, two cities that were hardly natural partners — Ephesus jealously guarded its status as the preeminent metropolis of Asia, and such concordance coins typically masked underlying civic rivalries rather than genuine cooperation. The homonoia coinage genre flourished under the Severans precisely because Roman provincial administration encouraged inter-city diplomacy as a substitute for the factional violence that had plagued Anatolian urban politics in the second century.
Ephesus held the title neokoros — warden of the imperial cult — multiple times, which gave its minting authority unusual prestige and output volume during Septimius Severus's reign.
This homonoia issue documents a formal alliance between Ephesus and Magnesia ad Maeandrum, two cities that were hardly natural partners — Ephesus jealously guarded its status as the preeminent metropolis of Asia, and such concordance coins typically masked underlying civic rivalries rather than genuine cooperation. The homonoia coinage genre flourished under the Severans precisely because Roman provincial administration encouraged inter-city diplomacy as a substitute for the factional violence that had plagued Anatolian urban politics in the second century.
Ephesus held the title neokoros — warden of the imperial cult — multiple times, which gave its minting authority unusual prestige and output volume during Septimius Severus's reign.