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| Issuer | Prusias ad Hypium (Bithynia and Pontus) |
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| Year | 164-169 |
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| Shape | Round (irregular) |
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| Reverse description | Bust of Tyche facing right, wearing a turreted crown and veil, rendered in the local Bithynian provincial style. The turreted crown, a hallmark attribute of city-goddess personifications in Greek civic coinage, is clearly delineated with battlements. The veil falls behind the head and over the shoulder, reinforcing the divine and civic character of the deity. The reverse legend ΠΡΟΥϹΙΕΩΝ ΠΡΟϹ ΥΠΙΩ, distributed around the periphery, identifies the issuing city of Prusias ad Hypium. |
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| Mint | Prusias ad Hypium, Bithynia, modern-day Konuralp, Turkey |
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| Additional information |
Prusias ad Hypium sat on the Hypius River in Bithynia, a city that had reinvented its name at least twice — originally Kieros, then renamed in honor of Prusias II of Bithynia, the king who notoriously handed Hannibal over to Roman envoys in 183 BC rather than face war. The city's bronze coinage under Marcus Aurelius belongs to a period when provincial mints across the Greek East were asserting civic identity through autonomous bronze issues, a practice Rome tolerated as a local pressure valve. This particular issue dates to the years of the co-reign with Lucius Verus, when the empire was simultaneously fighting the Parthians and managing the early tremors of the Antonine Plague.