Trajan's twentieth tribunician power dates this issue to 116–117 AD, the final phase of his Parthian campaign — the most ambitious Roman eastward expansion ever attempted. He had captured Ctesiphon, reached the Persian Gulf, and briefly held more territory than any emperor before or since. The Senate awarded him the title Parthicus, and the mint responded with a surge of bronze issues intended to supply armies operating at the edges of the known world. Trajan died at Selinus in August 117 before the overextended eastern provinces could be consolidated, leaving Hadrian to abandon nearly everything won.
Trajan's twentieth tribunician power dates this issue to 116–117 AD, the final phase of his Parthian campaign — the most ambitious Roman eastward expansion ever attempted. He had captured Ctesiphon, reached the Persian Gulf, and briefly held more territory than any emperor before or since. The Senate awarded him the title Parthicus, and the mint responded with a surge of bronze issues intended to supply armies operating at the edges of the known world. Trajan died at Selinus in August 117 before the overextended eastern provinces could be consolidated, leaving Hadrian to abandon nearly everything won.