Æ40 - Trajan Decius ΕΠΙ Ϲ Μ ΑΥΡ ΠΑΥΛΟΥ ΑΙΓΑΕΩΝ

Aegae was a minor coastal city in Aeolis whose civic coinage under Trajan Decius almost certainly owed its existence to the short-lived emperor's desperate need for municipal loyalty during a period of simultaneous barbarian pressure on the Danube frontier and the Decian persecution of Christians. The magistrate name ΕΠΙ Ϲ Μ ΑΥΡ ΠΑΥΛΟΥ identifies the local official responsible for the issue — a civic strategos or grammateus whose family, bearing the Roman gentilicium Aurelius, likely received citizenship under Caracalla's Constitutio Antoniniana of 212.

Decius himself was killed at the Battle of Abritus in 251, making his entire reign barely two years — which sharply limits the window for any civic bronze from this magistracy.