AR24 - Trajan L ΙΖ

Year 17 of Trajan's reign coincided with his final preparations for the Parthian campaign — the most ambitious Roman military undertaking since Augustus. Alexandria's mint was producing heavily during this period, partly to fund logistical demands across the eastern provinces. The billon content of Alexandrian tetradrachms had been quietly degraded through successive reigns, and by L ΙΖ the silver was already well below what Rome's own denarii carried, a disparity the Alexandrian economy had long been sealed off from addressing by deliberate imperial monetary isolation.