Æ40 - Severus Alexander ΕΠΙ ϹΤΡ ΧΡΥϹΟΓΟΝΟΥ ΜΥΤΙΛΗΝΑΙΩΝ

Mytilene, the principal city of Lesbos, retained remarkable civic pride in its coinage under the Roman provincial system — continuing to strike large bronzes well into the Severan period when many lesser cities had abandoned local production entirely. The magistrate name rendered in the obverse legend, Chrysogonos, is attested in Mysian and Aegean epigraphy as a freedman cognomen, raising the real possibility that this strategos was of manumitted origin holding civic office — not unusual under Severan administrative loosening but worth noting for a post of this visibility.