The
fall of the West in 476 did not
end the Roman Empire. The Eastern Empire lasted
another millennium; known
now as the Byzantine Empire, after
an
earlier Greek city on the site of Constantinople.
The
coinage reform of 498 is the demarcation between the Roman and Byzantine Empires. Few of
the Empire's citizens knew of the old Greek city of Byzantium. They thought of themselves
as Romans, though Latin was soon used only for rituals. |
Justinian's Court |
The people and the Court
spoke demotic Greek, ancestor of modern Greek. They called themselves Romaioi, and their
Empire, Romania.
The Byzantine
Empire fought continual wars with Persia and Persia's Arab conquerors,
ultimately falling to a Crusader army in 1204.Though
the Empire was restored in
1261, its economic vitality had been shattered,
and Constantinople fell to the Turks in
1453.
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Byzantine coins are one
of the most challenging and complex series to collect. Bronze issues, most of which are folles or 40 nummia pieces and divisions of that
denomination, are frequently crudely struck, often over previous issues. By far the most extensive part of this thousand-year
coinage series are gold solidi and their successors, which tend to sell at reasonable
prices unless the issue is rare or unusual in some way. There are
relatively few silver issues because the Empire did not have a
reliable source of silver production. During the Late Empire the gold
coinage was debased by adding silver, and after more than a thousand years
since the end of the Greek electrum coinage, that alloy reappeared as a
significant numismatic metal. |
