Æ17 - Antoninus Pius ΜΗΤΡΟΠο ΝΙΚοΜΗΔΙΑϹ

Nicomedia held the title of metropolis of Bithynia with a fierceness bordering on obsession, spending much of the second century in bitter civic rivalry with Nicaea over which city deserved the designation. The dispute consumed local finances, generated competing embassies to Rome, and produced a flood of bronze civic coinage explicitly advertising metropolitan status — which is precisely why that title appears so prominently in this issue's legend. Pliny the Younger, serving as Trajan's governor in Bithynia just decades earlier, found both cities' pretensions equally exhausting.