Æ34 - Commodus ΒΙΘΥΝΙΕΩΝ ΑΔΡΙΑΝΩΝ

Bithynium Claudiopolis occupied a peculiar place in Roman provincial coinage — the city claimed to be the birthplace of Antinous, Hadrian's famously beloved companion who drowned in the Nile in 130 AD and was subsequently deified. That association gave the city unusual prestige under Hadrian, who renamed it in his own honor, and the civic pride in that connection persisted well into the Severan period. Commodus, never subtle in his self-promotion, struck coins through provincial mints that were eager to flatter Rome's increasingly erratic emperor.

The ethnic ΒΙΘΥΝΙΕΩΝ ΑΔΡΙΑΝΩΝ — "of the Hadrianic Bithynians" — preserves that Hadrianic honorific decades after its grant.