Roman coinage forms an astoundingly rich body of material. That applies to coins struck by the centre as much as so-called provincial coinage. The latter can be roughly categorised as 1) coins struck by cities in the east of the Roman Empire, and for the Julio-Claudian period also in the west (in the western provinces, cities stopped issuing coins around the end of Claudius’ reign); 2) coinages issued in the name of federations of cities (koina) or coins celebrating alliances between cities (so-called homonoia-coins); 3) coins struck by ‘friendly kings’; and 4) so-called ‘provincial issues’ — mainly drachms, didrachms and tetradrachms, but also bronzes — that were mostly struck by important mints such as Alexandria, Antioch and Caesarea (in Cappadocia), probably under the supervision of Roman magistrates, to circulate in specific provinces.1