Æ23 - Valerian and Gallienus ΤΙΑΝΩΝ

Tium was a minor coastal polis on the Black Sea shore of Bithynia whose civic coinage under the joint reign of Valerian I and Gallienus reflects the peculiar administrative moment when a father-son co-emperorship was managing simultaneous crises on the Rhine and Persian frontiers. The city's ethnikon ΤΙΑΝΩΝ confirms the issuing authority unambiguously, distinguishing these bronzes from the output of nearby Prusias and Heraclea.

Valerian's capture by Shapur I at the Battle of Edessa in 260 AD — the first Roman emperor taken prisoner in the field — did not immediately halt provincial bronze production at cities like Tium, though issues attributable to Gallienus's sole reign typically follow without the paternal portrait.