AR23 - Tiberius ΘΕΑ ΣΕΒΑΣΤΑ, ΒΥΖ

Byzantion's civic coinage under Tiberius reflects the city's careful navigation of imperial flattery — the cult title ΘΕΑ ΣΕΒΑΣΤΑ honoring the deified Livia, whose formal consecration Tiberius himself had pointedly refused to authorize during his reign. Rome's Senate voted her divine honors in 42 AD under Claudius, making this provincial issue's language theologically premature and politically revealing. Byzantion was playing ahead of the official line, almost certainly to court imperial favor from a notoriously difficult emperor.