Æ28 - Severus Alexander ΚΑΛΧΑΔΟΝΙΩΝ

Calchedon occupied one of the most strategically valuable positions in the ancient world — perched at the mouth of the Bosphorus on the Asian shore, directly opposite Byzantium. The city had long been overshadowed by its neighbor across the strait, and Severus Alexander's reign offered a period of relative administrative stability under which provincial bronzes like this one circulated freely through the region's active commercial traffic. Chalcedon would later gain lasting significance as the site of the Fourth Ecumenical Council in 451 AD, but in the Severan period it remained a prosperous if secondary Bithynian city.