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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Voulgaroktonou, post: 4084297, member: 84047&quot;]The historian who showed those 2 coins was Marios Philippides, who has written extensively on the Ottomans and Byzantium during the Palaeologan period. His was a very misleading explanation. He was trying to contrast the “abundant” silver coinage of Constantine’s brother and predecessor, John VIII, with the poverty of Constantine’s “base metal coinage”. The earlier coin was certainly a stavraton, presumably of John, but the smaller coin had no detail I could see. But from what we know of the coinage of Constantine XI, it was limited to silver stavrata, half stavrata, and eighth stavrata. See Simon Bendall&#039;s article in Revue Numismatique 1991, pp. 134-142 and plates XIII-XVII. If one were to guess at the attribution of that small coin, if would be likely a follaro of one of Constantine&#039;s predecessors. For comparison, below are examples of a John VIII stavraton, a follaro of John VII, and 2 of my eighth stavrata of Constantine XI.</p><p><br /></p><p>John VIII. Stavraton. 7.09 gr. 25 mm. 12 hr. Sear 2564; DO 1636-38 var.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1064804[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>John VII. Follaro. 0.44 gr. 13.1 mm. 7 hr. Sear 2568 (as John VIII); DO 1391-92. (a poor photo - sorry)</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1064806[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>Constantine XI. Eighth Stavrata. Top: 0.63 gr. 12.7 mm. 11 hr. Sear -; DO 1789; Bendall 110 (this coin). Bottom 0.63 gr. 13 mm. 12 hr. Sear -; DO 1789; Bendall 129 (this coin).</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1064807[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>What Philippides also fails to sufficiently express is the overall poverty of the imperial court and “empire”, which by the 15th c. was limited to what was inside the walls of Constantinople, as well as to isolated outposts in the Morea and a few islands. The reality is further distorted by the computer generated images of the city, which show a Greco-Roman polis in all its glory; but by the 15th c. money had been lacking for centuries to maintain the city’s infrastructure, the court was so impoverished that cheap pottery vessels had to serve for silver or gold plate, and even the “jewels” in the imperial regalia were made of glass. An even more distorting view of these events is offered by the 2012 Turkish film Fetih 1453 (English: The Conquest 1453). This movie caused outrage in Greece, and I can see why. I’ll say no more about that, but check it out for yourself!</p><p><br /></p><p>As far as the question of “Roman” vs. “Byzantine”, there have been some great comments by other list members, so I will add nothing to them. But I would like to make interested persons aware of a recent book that treats this dichotomy very fully. Its details are below, and is followed by a publisher’s brief description of the book’s scope.</p><p><br /></p><p>Kaldellis, Anthony. Romanland : ethnicity and empire in Byzantium</p><p>Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019.</p><p>ISBN 9780674986510</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;Was there ever such a thing as the Byzantine Empire and who were those self-professed Romans we choose to call &quot;Byzantine&quot; today? At the heart of these two interlinked questions is Anthony Kaldellis&#039;s assertion that empires are, by definition, multiethnic. If there was indeed such a thing as the Byzantine Empire, which rules bounded majority and minority ethnic groups? The labels for the minority groups in Byzantium are clear - Slavs, Bulgarians, Armenians, Jews, Muslims. What was the ethnicity of the majority group? Historical evidence tells us unequivocally that no card-carrying Byzantine ever called himself &quot;Byzantine.&quot; He would identify as Roman. This line of identification was so strong in the eastern empire that even the conquering Ottomans saw themselves as inheritors of the Roman Empire. In Western scholarship, however, there has been a long tradition of denying Romanness to Byzantium. In the Middle Ages, people of the eastern empire were made &quot;Greeks,&quot; and by the nineteenth century they were shorn of their distorted Greekness and turned &quot;Byzantine.&quot; In Romanland, Kaldellis argues that it is time for historians to take the Romanness of Byzantines seriously so that we can better understand the relations between Romans and non-Romans, as well as the processes of assimilation that led to the absorption of foreign groups into the Roman genos&quot;[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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