Æ20 - Antoninus Pius ΒΙΛΛ(Ι)ΟϹ ΤΙΑΝΩΝ

Tium was a minor Bithynian coastal city that punched well above its weight in the volume of bronze coinage it produced under the Antonines, likely because local civic pride — and the expense of maintaining that pride — ran high during a period when Hadrian and then Antoninus Pius actively encouraged Greek cities to assert their Hellenic identities through coinage. The ethnic ΒΙΛΛΙΟϹΤΙΑΝΩΝ, occasionally spelled with the iota omitted, reflects an orthographic inconsistency seen across multiple die pairings from this city and has been used by scholars to distinguish issue sequences.