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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Gavin Richardson, post: 2781783, member: 83956&quot;]I have coins of Justinian and Anastasius as well. But I consider those early Byzantine and not late Roman. But I suppose that touches upon the OP query about periodicity.&nbsp; I traditionally go with 476 A.D. as the fall of Rome in the west.&nbsp; In my mind, then, perhaps the eastern emperor&nbsp; &nbsp; ruling at this time would be the latest Roman&nbsp; since it&#039;s the last time there&#039;s any semblance of unified or cooperating rule between East and West.&nbsp; After this point, the eastern, or byzantine, empire is the only game in town.&nbsp; So by that reckoning, Zeno might be my nominee, though historians quite naturally date the beginning of the Byzantine Empire with Constantine. But Victor has already pointed out how problematic the language of &quot;fall&quot; is, with many historians stressing the transition of late empire into the structures of feudalism and church administration in West. So I fully recognize that these periodicity divisions are largely arbitrary constructs we tend to apply in retrospect to make messy events neater in our understanding of history. But the OP asked a direct question, so after all this hem-hawing, I would nominate Zeno.&nbsp; Unfortunately I don&#039;t have a coin of him. And to bring all this back around to coinage, I find really interesting the dramatic gulf between the quite lovely gold coins struck in these late emperors&#039; names versus the pitiful little bronze coins struck contemporaneously.&nbsp; I suppose the latter are a testimony to the collapsing internal economy of the empire? Were the fancy gold coins struck to keep the barbarians at bay? There&#039;s just a huge gulf between quality that I find interesting and wonder about its significance.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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