SEVERUS ALEXANDER AE20_____Nicaea Bithynia____3 MILITARY STANDARDS____Provincial

Description

21B99
FRASCATIUS ANCIENTS
A BEAUTIFUL ROMAN PROVINCIAL BRONZE COIN OF SEVERUS ALEXANDER MINTED IN NICAEA BITHYNIA FROM 222 - 235 AD .
The city of Nicaea remained one of the most important urban centers of Asia Minor throughout the Roman period
THE SIZE IS 19.6 MM AND 5.00 GRAMS.
SNG Cop 519-520
OBVERSE – Draped and cuirassed bust of Severus Alexander right
REVERSE – Three military standards
SEVERUS ALEXANDER
Severus Alexander was the Roman emperor from AD 222 to 235, whose weak rule collapsed in the civil strife that engulfed the empire for the next 50 years. His maternal grandmother, Julia Maesa, was a sister-in-law of the emperor Septimius Severus (reigned 193–211).
In 218 the legions in Syria proclaimed as emperor Alexander’s 14-year-old cousin, Elagabalus, who was persuaded (221) to adopt Alexander as his heir. In March 222 the Praetorian Guard—probably prompted by Julia Maesa and Alexander’s mother, Julia Mamaea—murdered Elagabalus. Alexander succeeded to power without incident. During his reign the real authority was held by his grandmother (until her death in 226) and his mother.
Under this regime large sections of the civilian and military populace lost faith in the government at Rome and lapsed into lawlessness. In 224 the Praetorian Guards went so far as to murder their commander, Domitius Ulpianus, the chief minister of state and a distinguished jurist, in the presence of the emperor and his mother. Another member of the council, the historian Cassius Dio, had to open the year of his second consulate (229) outside Rome to avoid being murdered by the guard.
But it was his incompetence as a military leader that was Alexander’s undoing. In 230 and 231 the Persian king Ardashir I invaded the Roman province of Mesopotamia. Alexander launched a three-pronged counteroffensive (232) and was defeated when the force under his personal command failed to advance. But the heavy losses suffered by the Persians forced them to withdraw from Mesopotamia, thereby giving Alexander—because he had maintained control of Mesopotamia—an excuse to celebrate a triumph at Rome in 233. Shortly afterward the emperor was called to the Rhine to fight the invading Germanic tribe of the Alemanni. When, on advice from his mother, he ended these operations by buying peace from the Germans, his army became indignant. Early in 235 the soldiers murdered Alexander and his mother and proclaimed Gaius Julius Verus Maximinus as emperor. Alexander was deified after Maximinus’s death in 238.
NICAEA
Along with the rest of Bithynia, Nicaea came under the rule of the Roman Republic in 72 BC. The city remained one of the most important urban centers of Asia Minor throughout the Roman period, and continued its old competition with Nicomedia over pre-eminence and the location of the seat of the Roman governor of Bithynia et Pontus
The geographer Strabo described the city as built in the typical Hellenistic fashion with great regularity, in the form of a square, measuring 16 stadia in circumference, covering an area of 124 acres ; it had four gates, and all its streets intersected one another at right angles in accordance with the Hippodamian plan, so that from a monument in the center all the four gates could be seen. This monument stood in the gymnasium, which was destroyed by fire but was restored with increased magnificence by Pliny the Younger, when he was governor there in the early 2nd century AD. In his writings Pliny makes frequent mention of Nicaea and its public buildings.
Emperor Hadrian visited the city in 123 AD after it had been severely damaged by an earthquake and began to rebuild it. The new city was enclosed by a polygonal wall of some 5 kilometers in length. Reconstruction was not completed until the 3rd century, and the new set of walls failed to save Nicaea from being sacked by the Goths in 258 AD. The numerous coins of Nicaea which still exist attest the interest taken in the city by the Roman emperors, as well as its attachment to the rulers; many of them commemorate great festivals celebrated there in honor of gods and emperors.
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