Nummus - Claudius II Posthumous, Thessalonica

Claudius II died of plague in 270 AD, nearly fifty years before this coin was struck. The posthumous deification issues were revived under Constantine I as deliberate dynastic propaganda — Constantine claimed descent from Claudius II, and the consecration coinage produced at Thessalonica and other mints in 317–318 was part of a calculated effort to root his legitimacy in a beloved soldier-emperor rather than in Diocletian's tetrarchic system he had dismantled.

Thessalonica had only recently been brought firmly under Constantinian control following the defeat of Licinius's co-emperor Valens in 314.