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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;rasielsuarez, post: 25277813, member: 148921&quot;]Some of this is from my own as-yet unpublished research so might be controversial to some extent but the gist of it is that there are actually two series, though they&#039;re often treated as one because of the superficial similarity. </p><p><br /></p><p>The first were issued in conjunction with the founding of Constantinople and feature the bust of Roma with a &quot;P&quot; reverse and a counterpart of Constantinopolis with a &quot;K&quot; reverse. The K &amp; P are visual identifiers that would have been understood to the Greek-speaking populace; K for Constantinople and P, the letter Rho, for Rome (get it?) This is also an indication that the silvers were produced in and primarily for the citizens of the East as these letters would have been unintelligible in the Latin-speaking provinces.</p><p><br /></p><p>The second series is a revival most likely dating to 537 CE upon news reaching Constantinople that Rome had been recaptured. With the timing very closely aligning to the bicentennial celebration it was more or less obvious why they would choose the same series. </p><p><br /></p><p>The most fascinating part is that the symbolism used in this second series confirms the speculative assignment of the P &amp; K letter meanings of the first. This is because, in addition to using the P &amp; K reverses, there are also R and Chi-Rho* reverses too both of which further these as mnemonics; in this case clearly R for Roma and the Chi-Rho as a Constantinople-Roma pairing, respectively.</p><p><br /></p><p>*the missing loop on the Chi-Rho, while detracting somewhat from this association to our modern eyes, is not as problematic for 6th century Byzantines. This is because Christian iconography was not yet standardized and the rendition of Christograms was variable. The I over X styling probably signified the initials for Jesus Christ in Greek (ΙΗΣΟΥΣ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ) but was as equally and instantly recognizable a symbol as the more commonly seen Chi-Rho; the salient point being that it served as a visual aid that recalled Christ and the first two of these letters through coincidence further serve to correlate the two cities.</p><p><br /></p><p>I have more on this but perhaps best to leave it for the next book where I can more fully explore these associations.</p><p><br /></p><p>Rasiel[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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