Æ26 - Gordian III ΚΙΑΝΩΝ

Cius, the Bithynian port city at the eastern end of the Propontis, had a complicated civic history by the time Gordian III's coins were struck there. Philip V of Macedon razed the city in 202 BC and handed its territory to Prusias I of Bithynia, who refounded it as Prusias ad Mare — yet the old name persisted in local usage for generations. That stubborn civic identity surfaces in the ΚΙΑΝΩΝ ethnic on coins like this one, a small assertion of origins the Macedonians tried to erase.