Neil S Berman - Expert Numismatist & Gold Coin Dealer

Gold Coins Trade through History

Byzantine Gold Solidus & Nomisma

Byzantine Gold Solidus & Nomisma 383AD to 1453 when Constantinople fell to the Turks. Known as the Eastern Roman Empire before the fall of Rome is the term conventionally used to describe the Greek-speaking Roman Empire of the Middle Ages, the area centered around its capital of Constantinople, but usually referring to the time before the fall of the Western Roman Empire centered in Rome. To its inhabitants, the Empire was simply the Roman Empire and its emperors continued the unbroken succession of Roman emperors. During much of its history it was known to many of its Western contemporaries as The Empire of the Greeks due to the increasing dominance of its Greek population and distinct culture. The Byzantine period may have began about the reign of Emperor Constantine I , or in the reign of Theodosius I with Christendom's victory over pagan Roman religion, or, following his death in 395, with the permanent division of the empire into western and eastern halves.

The Gold Solidus, about twenty-two millimeters in diameter weighting 4.45 grams, weighed 1/72 of the Roman pound, was produced for one thousand years in hundreds of varieties. It was extensively counterfeited in Carthage and by the Arabs in North Africa. By 1400 the coin was so debased that it had been by and large replaced by the ducat.