Æ24 - Macrianus and Quietus ΝΙΚΑΙΕΩΝ

Macrianus and Quietus represent one of the more desperate experiments in Roman succession politics. After Valerian's capture by Shapur I in 260 AD — the first Roman emperor ever taken prisoner by a foreign enemy — his son Gallienus was preoccupied with threats on the Rhine and Danube, leaving the eastern provinces effectively ungoverned. The finance minister Macrianus Senior, himself too lame to claim the purple, elevated his two sons jointly. Neither had military credibility; both were dead within a year, defeated by Gallienus's general Aureolus and, separately, by Odaenathus of Palmyra.

Nicaea's decision to strike for this short-lived pair rather than acknowledge Gallienus reflects the genuine administrative vacuum in Bithynia during those months.