Æ21 - Nero ΗΡΑΚΛΕΩΤΑΝ

Heraclea Pontica had a long tradition of civic bronze coinage stretching back to the fourth century BC, and under Nero the city continued issuing in its own name — ΗΡΑΚΛΕΩΤΑΝ, "of the Heracleans" — rather than adopting the imperial mint's output wholesale. This was common practice in the eastern provinces, where Rome permitted local bronzes to circulate for small transactions while silver flowed from centralized sources.

Nero's reign saw considerable administrative reorganization in Bithynia and Pontus, a province notorious for financial mismanagement that Pliny the Younger would later document exhaustively under Trajan.