Selinus in Cilicia, 244-249 AD., Philip I., AE 29, SNG Levante 467.

Selinus in Cilicia, Philippus I., AE 29, 244-249 AD
Obv.: AY K M IOYΛ [ΦI]ΛΠΠOC CE , Laureate, draped, cuirassed bust right (seen from behind
Rev.: TPAIANO[Π CEΛINO]YCI ΘHC [IEPAC] , Apollo standing front, patera in his right hand, rod/staff in left hand, on right side: bird (raven?) beneath
SNG France 2,686; SNG Levante 467; Lindgren I,1595; SNG Pfalz 6,1105 , (thanks to Markus for ID)

Selinus: City in Cilicia Aspera, among the principal ones on this coast and mentioned by most of the ancient geographers from Pseudo-Skylax on. It was one of the towns taken by Antiochos III in 197 B.C. (Livy 33.20), but is best known as the place where Trajan died in A.D. 117 on his way back from the East. Then it took the name of Trajanopolis (as on this), but the old one prevailed (as on this), shown by coins and other documents.

In mid-summer 117, when Trajan was returning from his Parthian campaigns, he fell ill while at Selinus in Cilicia and died on August 8. The following day his adoption of Hadrian was announced by Plotina and Attianus, the praetorian prefect who had earlier been Hadrian's guardian, with some question whether Trajan had indeed performed the act or whether it was posthumous, thanks to his widow. On August 11, which he considered his dies imperii, the army of Syria hailed its legate, Hadrian, as emperor, which made the senate's formal acceptance an almost meaningless event. This was an example of the historian Tacitus' famous dictum that an emperor could be made elsewhere than at Rome. Hadrian must then have proceeded to Selinus at once from Antioch, to catch up with Attianus, Plotina, and Matidia. He then returned to his province no later than September and stayed there at least into the new year, consolidating his administration.

Basil,of Seleucia (Vita S. Theclae, II, 17) said that the city cof Selinus, which was formerly of much importance, lost it from his time to the fifth century. Constantine Porphyrogenitus, in the tenth century, called it a small town. Today it is the little village of Selinti (near the city GazipaÅŸa) in the vilayet of Adana; there are ruins of a theatre, aqueduct, market-place, bath, etc. .
The coinage begins under the kingdom of Antiochos IV of Kommagene, and continues later from Trajan to Philip. A bishop of Selinos is recorded, under the metropolitan of Seleukeia. . Le Quien (Oriens christianus, II, 1019) names four bishops: Neon, present at the council of Constantinople, 381; Alypius, at Ephesus, 431; AElianus, at Chalcedon, 451; Gheon, signer of the letter of the bishops of the province to Emperor Leo, 458. The see is in the Greek "Notitiae Episcopatuum" of the Patriarchate of Antioch from the fifth to the tenth century (Vailhé in "Echos d'Orient", X, 95, 145). It was also perhaps an Armenian bishopric until the tenth century. (Alishan, Sissouan, Venice, 1899, p. 60). Eubel (Hierarchia catholica medii aevi, I, 468) names a Latin bishop in 1345.