Æ25 - Severus Alexander ΤΡΙϹ ΝΕΩΚΟΡΩΝ ΝΙΚΟΜΗΔΕΩΝ

Nicomedia's claim to triple neokorate status — honored as thrice warden of the imperial cult — was hard-won through decades of rivalry with Nicaea, its perpetual competitor across Bithynia. The two cities spent much of the second and third centuries trading legal challenges and imperial petitions over neokorate titles, prestige that carried real commercial and administrative weight. Severus Alexander's reign gave Nicomedia an opportunity to advertise all three titles simultaneously on civic bronze, a pointed assertion during a period when the city's primacy in the province was never entirely settled.