Author: NMA

Silver tetradrachm, minted in Amphipolis in 357-356 BC, when the city officially passed into the Macedonian kingdom.
On the obverse is depicted the head of the god Apollo with a laurel wreath facing forward.

Denarius minted by Marcus Junius Brutus in 43-42 BC at a mobile mint in northern Greece. It is part of the period of mass production of denarius by Roman military leaders during their conflicts. The obverse depicts the head of Brutus, while the reverse depicts a Dioscuri helmet, a symbol of freedom, flanked by two downward-facing manuals.

Argenteus, minted by Diocletian at the mint of Heraclea in Thrace, between 294/6-298 AD. The obverse depicts the emperor's head crowned with laurel. On the reverse, the two Emperors and the two Caesars, the rulers of the Tetrarchy, in robes, sacrifice on a tripod altar in front of a camp with an arched gate and six turrets.

Tetradrachm made of an alloy of silver and copper, minted in Alexandria, Egypt, depicting the emperor Hadrian on the obverse and his wife Sabina on the reverse.

Emperor Justinian is depicted on this bronze coin, the folli, the largest bronze subdivision of the Byzantine monetary system until the 11th century. He wears military attire and holds the most important symbol of imperial power, the cruciform orb.

From the 1040s onwards, the gradual and ultimately disastrous decline of the gold coin began, which is intertwined with the general decline of the empire.

A large commemorative bronze coin, one of the "medals of antiquity". It was issued for the anniversary of the first twenty years (vicennalia) of Constantine I in power, in 326 AD by the mint of Rome. The reverse of the "medal" depicts Emperor Constantine I as Zeus, seated on a breastplate, offering a sphere with a phoenix (a mythical bird that is reborn from its ashes) to his son, Caesar Crispus. The young Caesar is depicted as a young Dionysus, with a trophy and a panther, symbolizing the victory over Licinius at Chrysopolis in Bithynia (324 AD) and the conquest of the East.

Hyperpyrus of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (1081-1118), where the obverse is occupied by the representation of the enthroned Christ while the reverse depicts the emperor being blessed by the hand of God. Alexios I was unable to stop the decline of the gold coin during the first decades of his reign, due to the particularly turbulent political situation that prevailed in the empire.

2000 A milestone in medieval European coinage is the gold coin issued by Frederick II of Staufen, ruler of the Holy Roman Empire. The augustalis (or augustale) came to revive the limited tradition of gold coinage in Western Europe and to be the precursor to the powerful gold coins of the Italian cities that appeared a little later, after the mid-13th century.

For a brief transitional period, from approximately 635/650 to 695/700 AD, the Islamic world issued the so-called "Arabo-Byzantine" - imitations of gold and copper Byzantine coins - and "Arabo-Sassanian" coins, i.e. imitations of silver Persian coins.