Æ37 - Marcus Aurelius ΔΙΑ ΚΑΡΜΙΝΙΟΥ ΚΛΑΥΔΙΑΝΟΥ ΑϹΙΑΡΧΟΥ ΑΤΤΟΥΔΕΩΝ

Karminiος Klaudianos, the Asiarch named on this coin, held one of the most expensive civic offices in the Roman East — the Asiarchate required funding public festivals, sacrifices, and spectacles at personal cost, sometimes bankrupting families across generations. His name appearing in the nominative on a provincial bronze from the minor Carian city of Attuda is a rare epigraphic survival, placing a specific man's ambition and wealth into the archaeological record at exactly the moment Aurelius was managing the Parthian war's aftermath and the first tremors of the Antonine Plague.