Æ14 - Valerian and Gallienus ΤΙΑΝΩΝ

Tium was a minor Bithynian port city whose civic coinage under the joint reign of Valerian and Gallienus represents one of the last gasps of autonomous Greek-style municipal bronze production in the region. The 250s AD were brutal for Asia Minor — Gallienus spent much of his co-reign fighting incursions on the Danube frontier while his father Valerian was captured by Shapur I of Persia in 260, the first Roman emperor ever taken prisoner by a foreign enemy. That humiliation effectively ended the reign and, with it, most remaining civic bronze output across Bithynian cities.