Æ26 - Commodus ΜΗΤΡ ΝΕΩ ΝΙΚΟΜΗ

Nicomedia had been jockeying for primacy among Bithynian cities for over a century by the time this coin was struck, its civic title ΜΗΤΡΟΠΟΛΙΣ hard-won and jealously defended against rival Nicaea. The abbreviation on the reverse is the crux of that competition — Nicomedia asserting its status as metropolis in bronze, for local circulation, during a reign otherwise remembered for the emperor's increasingly erratic self-identification with Hercules.