Issued during the chaotic final years before Actium, this bronze belongs to the brief administrative experiment of combining Cyrenaica and Crete as a single Roman province — an arrangement that lasted only from around 34 BC until Augustus reorganized the east following his victory over Antony. The magistrate name encoded in the legend identifies a quaestor-level official, the ΤΑΜΙΑΣ (tamias) being the Greek equivalent of quaestor, responsible for provincial finances at a moment when those finances were being squeezed hard by the competing demands of Antony and Octavian.
The L Λ in the legend denotes regnal year 30 in the Ptolemaic counting system — a dating convention retained long after direct Ptolemaic rule had ended in Cyrene.
Issued during the chaotic final years before Actium, this bronze belongs to the brief administrative experiment of combining Cyrenaica and Crete as a single Roman province — an arrangement that lasted only from around 34 BC until Augustus reorganized the east following his victory over Antony. The magistrate name encoded in the legend identifies a quaestor-level official, the ΤΑΜΙΑΣ (tamias) being the Greek equivalent of quaestor, responsible for provincial finances at a moment when those finances were being squeezed hard by the competing demands of Antony and Octavian.
The L Λ in the legend denotes regnal year 30 in the Ptolemaic counting system — a dating convention retained long after direct Ptolemaic rule had ended in Cyrene.