Æ37 - Septimius Severus ΕΠΙ ΜΕΝΑΝΔΡΟΥ ΒΑϹ ϹΤΡΑ ΥΠΑΙΠΗΝΩΝ

Hypaepa was a small Lydian town in the Cayster river valley whose civic coinage depended entirely on the prestige of its magistrates — naming the sitting strategos on the coin was not decoration but a political claim to Roman favor. The magistrate Menander named here held the office of basilikos strategos, a title blending Greek civic tradition with Roman provincial administration in a way peculiar to the conventus of Ephesus.

Under Septimius Severus, provincial mints across Asia Minor dramatically increased bronze output to compensate for a silver coinage increasingly debased at the imperial level.