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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Curtis, post: 24875513, member: 26430&quot;]Fascinating topics: The style &amp; fabric of Byzantine coinage; how it varied across &gt;1,000 years; and historical, cultural, and ideological reasons for the changes.</p><p><br /></p><p>Below are a few of my favorite AE Folles from Anastasius through Heraclius (i.e., circa 498-620). The early ones retained the side-profile bust from Roman Imperial period. But in his Year 12 (538/9), Justinian revised the bronze coinage, borrowing the front-facing bust from the Gold Solidus (and greatly increasing the size of the Follis). From that point on, the profile bust was kept only on the smaller gold coins, through about Constantine IV (c. 668-685), I believe:</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1596696[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1596695[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>That bust style was typical of the AV Solidus denomination started by Constantine.</p><p><br /></p><p>Many of these coins blur the boundary between Roman Imperial and Byzantine. Today, coin dealers usually define Byzantine coinage as beginning with Anastasius, but older catalogs often included the Theodosian coinage under Byzantine, and some historians (e.g., Norwich) start their Byzantine histories with Constantine (founder of Constantinople).</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1596733[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Notice that the Tremissis (Justinian) retains the profile bust and is almost indistinguishable in style/design from those of Theodosius (and esp. Theodosius II) well over a century earlier.</p><p><br /></p><p>On the Solidus, the pagan holdover Victory was replaced by a (male) angel in the Justinianic Dynasty, but survived much longer on the Semissis and Tremissis. Justin II&#039;s Constantinopolis seated was the last Solidus personification (another pagan holdover).</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1596734[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>The coin above is my favorite (possibly my favorite-favorite coin). Even within the minimalist, relatively 2-D style of middle Byzantine art, and despite the lack of realism, the image has always struck me as powerful and &quot;realistic&quot; in the feeling it conveys.</p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;ve gone on and on before about this coin many times, and how lucky I felt that one day it popped off the cover of <i>ERIC II</i> and into my collection:</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1596738[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Byzantine coinage stretches over such a long period that even a collection with many coins have large empty patches. This Nikephorus with Stauracius Follis is&nbsp; one of my only coins from the 8th through 11th centuries (albeit a nice, published representative, Sear Byz 1612 &quot;plate coin&quot;):</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1596746[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1596747[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Over four hundred years later (1222-1254), similar imagery on this John Ducas-Vatatzes Tetarteron (from the Goodacre collection, published in his <i>Handbook </i>&amp; articles in the 1930s, also prob. some much older articles/books by Sabatier &amp; de Saulcy, ill. by Dardel):</p><p><img src="https://www.cointalk.com/attachments/goodacre-collage-jpg.1586359/" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>Then, of course, there is the distinctively confusing artwork on late Byzantine &amp; Palaeologan coinage.</p><p><br /></p><p>A typical bronze Andronicus II &amp; Michael IX AE Trachy, ex Bendall Collection:</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1596753[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>And some late gold (heavily clipped) &amp; electrum...</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1596754[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Ran out of attachments, but the development of Silver in parallel is really fun too (though I don&#039;t have any of the <i>really</i> late ones).[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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