Æ25 - Domitian ΝΕΙΚΑΙΕΙΣ ΠΡΩΤΟΙ ΤΗΣ ΕΠΑΡΧΕΙΑΣ

The legend ΝΕΙΚΑΙΕΙΣ ΠΡΩΤΟΙ ΤΗΣ ΕΠΑΡΧΕΙΑΣ — "Nicaeans, first of the province" — was a hard-won title in a bitter ongoing rivalry with Nicomedia, which held the competing claim of ΝΕΙΚΟΜΗΔΕΙΣ ΠΡΩΤΟΙ ΚΑΙ ΜΗΤΡΟΠΟΛΙΣ. The two cities spent generations lobbying successive emperors for precedence, and the dispute was still unresolved enough that Pliny the Younger wrote to Trajan about it just years after this coin's issue.