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Æ35 - Gordian III ΗΡΑΚΛΗΑϹ ΜΑΤΡΟϹ ΑΠΟΙΚΩΝ ΠΟΛΙΩΝ, ΑΠΟ ΠΟΝΤΩ
| Issuer | Heraclea Pontica (Bithynia and Pontus) |
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| Year | 238-244 |
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| Composition | Bronze |
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| Obverse description | Heroic bust of Heracles facing left, draped in the Nemean lion skin about the neck and shoulders, the animal's head serving as a headdress; the hero holds his characteristic club. The field carries the Greek inscription ΤΟΝ ΚΤΙϹΤΑΝ, identifying Heracles as the founder of Heraclea Pontica. The portrait is rendered in the robust, idealised manner characteristic of provincial bronzes of the Severan and Gordian periods. |
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| Mintage | ND (238-244) |
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Heraclea Pontica had a complicated relationship with its own founding myth. The city traced its origins to a Dorian colony, and the lengthy civic title invoked in this coin's legend — asserting metropolitan status over colonies around the Pontic coast — was a deliberate political assertion, not mere civic pride. Under Gordian III, provincial bronzes of this type were among the last large-denomination civic issues Heraclea would strike before the city's coinage tradition effectively collapsed in the mid-third century, a casualty of imperial centralization and frontier pressure from Gothic raids along the Black Sea.