Evil Emperors and their coins.

Constantine the Great was never proclaimed a Saint. In fact his mother Helena alone was proclaimed so.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I have a common version of your Emperor from Gorny&Mosch auction....

He was not a nice guy. He usurped power from the legitimate Emperor Maurice Tiberius, had his sons beheaded in front of Dad, then it was his turn, executed the wife. daughters...
Then ran disastrous campaign vs the Sasanians, had one Sasanian leader(Narses) burnt alive, under promise of safe conduct. Ordered numerous purges of potential enemies during his eight year reign.
John

 

John, A number of scholars have come to the defense of Phocas, trying to sanitize his image, but the vast majority of historians view him in negative light. The 11th century chronicler George Cedrenus, gives an amusing description of Emperor Phocas' physical appearance "Under a tangle of red hair his thick, beetling eyebrows met across his nose; the rest of his face was deformed by a huge, angry scar that turned crimson when he was aroused, giving it a still more hideous aspect than that which it normally bore."

 

I thought Isaac II was not that bad, but Isaac from Cyprus, the pretend ruler was a villain, he ruled Cyprus Illegally 1185-91AD , he was defeated by Richard the Lionheart and when Isaac asked for one thing " Not to be put into irons, Richard obliged and put in him in chains of silver.

ISAAC COMNENUS OF CYPRUS AG TETARTERON S-1999 DOC 10B CLBC 6.3.7
OBV Christ Emmanuel, beardless and nimbate, wearing tunic and kolobion, seated upon throne with back; r hand raised in benediction holds scroll in l. Pellet in each limb of nimbus cross.

REV Full length figure of emperor on RIGHT. crowned by virgin nimbate on l.. Emperor wears stemma, divitision, collar piece, and jeweled loros of simplified type; holds in L hand scepter cruciger and in r. anexikakia. Virgin wears tunic and maphorion.
Size 18.72mm

Weight 2.9gm
This issues in Cyprus have a small amount of silver in them 1.5% make them more related to the Metropolitan issue of the empire.

DOC list 1 examples with a weight of 2.84 gm and sized at 19mm

This is one of my rarest of coins, I am actually afraid of cleaning it in case I do any damage, only one or two others are known.

Here is the normal version.

 

You probably never heard of one of the most evils emperors in history. He is the second Umayyad caliph Yazid I . He goes down in history as a very cruel young king who did what he wish for 3 years of his reign. He slaughtered thousands of innocent and dissidents. He attacked the holiest place of islam (Mekka) with catapult. He attacked city of Medina with a huge army and his army raped all women and killed many men for 3 consecutive days. His cruel and heartless governor Ubayd-allah ibn Ziyad slaughtered the holy persona in Islam who was the grandson of prophet Muhammad in a desert with all his family members (70 men vs 30000 army!)

Here is the coin of Yazid I with the name of governor Ubayd-allah ibn Ziyad in pahlavi



SLAMIC, Umayyad Caliphate. temp. Yazid I ibn Mu'awiya. AH 60-64 / AD 680-683. AR Drachm (32mm, 3.89 g, 3h). Issue of Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad, governor of Iraq. ST (Istakhr) mint. Dated AH 61 (AD 680/1)


There is an amazing movie made with English subtitles that shows this turbulent period in history of middle east. I recommend this movie to everyone it is made great with many historical facts from the great history books such as Al-Tabari

 

Well, by todays standards as some have said, i think almost every emperor is 'evil'. Perhaps even the good - adoptive - emperors, as even those were by todays standard a bunch of warmongers (nice word, had to look it up!).

My 'favorite' (bad choice of word!) story of a evil emperor though is the one of caracalla. So here is my caracalla antoninianus.

 

octavius, Your selection of coins are breathtaking ! Strangely one coin keeps pulling my eye back for another look, your antoninianus of Trajan Decius.

The celator has imparted a shocking verism to the portrait that you only see on the finest of large medallions or sculpted marble heads. To see this quality on a billon antoninianus is extremely rare.

 

Al, thanks. I won it in an auction - Rauch, auction 107, lot 407, Nov. 2018. I could not resist it, especially the toning.

 

Rauch is one of my favorite auctions, probably won 50 coins thru them.