Æ26 - Philip I ΝΙΚΟΜΗΔΕΩΝ ΔΙϹ ΝΕΩΚΟΡΩΝ

Nicomedia's title ΝΕΩΚΟΡΩΝ — "twice temple warden" — was not merely honorific vanity. The city fought aggressively for neokorate status, which conferred the right to maintain an imperial cult temple and brought substantial economic benefit through festival traffic and pilgrim spending. The second neokorate was granted under Septimius Severus, and Nicomedia leveraged both titles on its coinage for decades afterward, long after rival Nicaea had mounted serious challenges to its primacy as the leading city of Bithynia.