Tetradrachm - Augustus ΕΤΟΥΣ ΑΛ ΝΙΚΗΣ, ΥΠΑ ΙΓ

The dating formula encoded in this coin's legend — year 31 of the Victory Era, consulship 13 — allows it to be pinned precisely to 1 BC/1 AD, the hinge year of the Western calendar. Antioch's mint under Augustus was among the most productive in the eastern empire, supplying silver coinage to a region where Roman denarii circulated poorly against the entrenched tetradrachm tradition inherited from Seleucid practice.

The Victory Era itself commemorated Actium, giving every coin in this series a quietly political timestamp counting forward from Augustus's destruction of Antony and Cleopatra's forces in 31 BC.