Æ22 - Antoninus Pius Ν[

Nicaea's civic bronze issues under Antoninus Pius were produced during a period of unusual municipal confidence — the city was then competing aggressively with Nicomedia for the title of "first city" of Bithynia, a rivalry prosecuted not through warfare but through honorific inscriptions, architectural commissions, and the prestige of coin issues. The truncated legend preserved here almost certainly carried a reference to that civic pride.

Bithynian bronzes of this period were struck on local authority without imperial oversight of design, which accounts for the considerable die variation seen across the series.