Æ23 - Maximinus ΝΙΚΑΙΕΩΝ

Nicaea's civic bronze coinage under Maximinus Thrax occupies an awkward political moment: the emperor never visited the eastern provinces and was actively despised by the Senate, yet provincial mints continued issuing his portrait as a matter of administrative routine. Maximinus was the first emperor of purely non-senatorial, non-Italian origin — a Thracian soldier who rose through the ranks — and his reign of roughly three years ended when he was murdered by his own troops outside Aquileia in 238, the so-called Year of the Six Emperors.