Æ35 - Gordian III ΗΡΑΚΛΗΑϹ ΜΑΤΡΟϹ ΑΠΟΙΚΩΝ ΠΟΛΙΩΝ, ΑΠΟ ΠΟΝΤΩ

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.