AR25 - Tiberius ΘΕΟΣ ΣΕΒΑΣΤΟΣ

This tetradrachm belongs to the Alexandrian civic coinage struck under the Roman prefecture, where the mint maintained a distinctive billon and silver tradition long after Rome had standardized its own provincial arrangements. The deification formula ΘΕΟΣ ΣΕΒΑΣΤΟΣ — applied here to Augustus posthumously — was already a well-established Egyptian flattery by Tiberius's reign, reflecting the Ptolemaic habit of treating rulers as divine that Rome absorbed wholesale in Egypt without the political embarrassment it would have caused in the capital. Tiberius himself reportedly detested such honorifics when directed at the living, yet made no effort to suppress their posthumous application to his predecessor.