Æ35 - Septimius Severus ΝΙΚΟΜΗΔΕΩΝ ΔΙϹ ΝΕΩΚΟΡΩΝ

Nicomedia's title ΔΙϹ ΝΕΩΚΟΡΩΝ — "twice temple warden" — was not honorific wallpaper. It reflected a fiercely contested civic status, with Nicomedia and Nicaea locked in a prolonged rivalry over neocorate rankings that spilled into Roman imperial politics repeatedly throughout the second and third centuries. Severus awarded and withheld such honors instrumentally, using them to reward loyalty during the civil wars against Pescennius Niger and Clodius Albinus, both of which touched Bithynia directly.