Æ29 - Gordian III ΝΙΚΟΜΗΔΕΩΝ ΔΙϹ ΝΕΩΚΟΡΩΝ

Nicomedia held the title of neokoros — official keeper of an imperial cult temple — twice over by the time Gordian III's reign began, a status the city aggressively advertised on its civic bronze coinage. The designation ΔΙϹ ΝΕΩΚΟΡΩΝ (twice neokoros) was a point of fierce municipal pride in a province where cities competed bitterly for imperial honorifics. Nicomedia had clawed back prestige lost to Nicaea across decades of rivalry, and these bronzes functioned partly as that argument made permanent in metal.