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Anastasius I, 11 April 491 - 1 July 518 A.D.

Ancient coins of Emperor Anastasius for sale in the Forum Ancient Coins shop

After Zeno died without designating a successor, the Empress Ariadne was called upon to select a new emperor. Her choice was an obscure but successful finance civil servant, Anastasius. She made a wise choice. Anastasius ruled successfully for 27 years. His financial expertise resulted in the accumulation of 320,000 pounds of gold! He also restructured the currency system, creating the nummus unit of account and the follis of 40 nummi. Because of the dramatic changes, Anastasius' reform is often seen by numismatists as the end of Roman coinage and the beginning of Byzantine coinage. The people of the empire didn't see it that way and continued to call themselves Romans until the fall of Constantinople on 29 May 1453.

Also see: ERIC - Anastasius I

REFERENCES

Bellinger, A. Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection and in the Whittemore Collection, Vol. I, Anastasius I to Maurice, 491-602. (Washington D.C., 1966).
Berk, H. Eastern Roman Successors of the Sestertius. (Chicago, 1987).
Berk, H. Roman Gold Coins of the Medieval World, 383 - 1453 A.D. (Joliet, IL, 1986).
Carson, R., P. Hill & J. Kent. Late Roman Bronze Coinage. (London, 1960).
Cohen, H. Description historique des monnaies frappées sous l'Empire Romain, Vol. 8: Nepotian to Romulus Augustus, plus tesserae & cotorniates. (Paris, 1888).
Depeyrot, G. Les monnaies d'or de Constantin II à Zenon (337-491). Moneta 5. (Wetteren, 1996).
Grierson, P. Byzantine Coins. (London, 1982).
Hahn, W. Moneta Imperii Byzantini, Volume 1: Anastasius I - Justinianus I (491 - 565). (Vienna, 1973).
Hahn, W. & M. Metlich. Money of the Insipient Byzantine Empire. (Vienna, 2000).
Hennequin, G. Catalogue des monnaies musulmanes de la Bibliotheque Nationale. (Paris, 1985).
Kent, J. The Roman Imperial Coinage, Volume X, The Divided Empire and the Fall of the Western Parts, AD 395 - 491. (London, 1994).
King, C. & D. Sear. Roman Silver Coins, Volume V, Carausius to Romulus Augustus. (London, 1987).
Metlich, M. The Coinage of Ostrogothic Italy. (London, 2004).
Morrisson, C. Catalogue des Monnaies Byzantines de la Bibliothèque Nationale. (Paris, 1970).
Ratto, R. Monnaies Byzantines et d'autre Pays contemporaines à l'époque byzantine. (Lugano, 1930).
Sabatier, J. Description générale des monnaies Byzantines. (Paris, 1863).
Sear, D. Byzantine Coins and Their Values. (London, 1987).
Sear, D. Roman Coins and Their Values, Vol. V: The Christian Empire...Constantine II to Zeno, AD 337 - 491. (London, 2014).
Sommer, A. Die Münzen des Byzantinischen Reiches 491-1453. Mit einem Anhang: Die Münzen des Kaiserreichs von Trapezunt. (Regenstauf, 2010).
Tolstoi, I. Monnaies byzantines. (St. Petersburg, 1913 - 14).
Vagi, D. Coinage and History of the Roman Empire. (Sidney, 1999).
Wroth, W. Catalogue of the Coins of the Vandals, Ostrogoths, Lombards and of the Empires of Thessalonica, Nicaea, and Trebizond in the British Museum. (London, 1911).
Wroth, W. Catalogue of the Imperial Byzantine Coins in the British Museum. (London, 1908).

OBVERSE LEGENDS

DNANASTASIVSPFAVG
DNANASTASIVSPPAVG
DNANASTASIVSPERPAV


Moneta Historical Reference

ANASTASIUS was born to humble parents about 430 at Dyrrachium (Durres, Albania) in the Macedonian province of Epirus Nova. He was a "Silentiary" under Zeno. A Silentiary was one of thirty distinguished men who personally served at the palace as ushers and watchmen over the emperor's person, and they were ranked with senators. Late in Zeno's reign a soothsayer predicted that his throne would be taken by a Silentiary, and Zeno immediately had Pelagius, the most distinguished Silentiary, strangled, probably to preserve the throne for Zeno's brother Longinus.

Zeno died on April 11, 491 from a fit of epilepsy, without leaving a clear successor.  His son by his first marriage, also named Zeno, had died before reaching adulthood, and his brother Longinus had a reputation for debauchery. The question of a successor was left to his widow, the Augusta Ariadne, who appeared at the Hippodrome before the populace which cried out for an orthodox Christian (as opposed to a Monophysite Christian) and "Roman" (probably as opposed to another crude Isaurian) emperor. Her chief ministers held a council and decided to leave the choice entirely up to Ariadne. She selected the sixty-one-year old Anastasius, who not only had a reputation for integrity, but was handsome in addition.  Unfortunately Anastasius had drifted to the Monophysite position, and the Patriarch of Constantinopolis (Istanbul, Turkey) required him to sign an orthodox profession of faith before he gave his blessing him. Anastasius did so and was introduced to the populace and acclaimed by the troops in the Hippodrome on the following day. Immediately following his acclamation by the populace and the troops, the Patriarch crowned him, making the elevation of an emperor a religious event for the first time. Ariadne married the new emperor only six weeks later on May 20, 491.

Although at his elevation Anastasius was of a very advanced age for those times, he seems to have lived up to his name, which in Greek means "resurrection", because he ruled for twenty-seven years, a reign exceeded in the previous 500 years only by Augustus, Constantine I, Honorius, Theodosius II and Valentinian III!

The first problems that Anastasius faced were created by the Isaurian faction, led by Longinus, Zeno's brother, who felt that the throne had been unjustly denied to him. The Isaurians, from the wild mountainous region of southern Asia Minor, had been recruited during the reign of Leo I to counter the power of the German elements in the army, and they had effectively achieved that purpose. However they had never been popular in the capital, and through the instigation of Longinus they became a serious menace to Anastasius, who resolved to deal with them. A pretext was provided by a riot which broke out in the Hippodrome, which Anastasius blamed on the Isaurians. In 492 he expelled all of the Isaurians from the city, and banished Longinus to Alexandria, where he was forced to take religious vows. Anastasius' order was so severe that it even included Lallis, Zeno's mother, and he confiscated all of Zeno's estates. About the same time an open revolt broke out in Isauria, which was reinforced by the exiles from the capital. The rebel army is said to have numbered 100,000 men, but its power was crushed in a decisive battle at Cotyaeum in Phrygia. The rebel strength was broken, but remnants retreated to the wilds of Isauria where they remained a threat until about 497.

Anastasius' reign was also troubled by domestic squabbling between the two "demes" (originally adherents of athletic teams represented by colors), the Greens and the Blues.  This frequently resulted in fatal rioting, and Anastasius' own illegitimate son was killed in such riots in 501. Anastasius became associated with the Greens as the "demes" began to take on the character of political parties, with the Blues representing the large land-owners and the Greens representing trade and industry.

Anastasius' fiscal policy was extremely frugal state spending, coupled with encouragement of industry. Such a policy left the Empire much richer at his death (by 320,000 pounds of gold) than he had found it. He carried out a coinage reform in 498 which resulted in a sweeping change of the bronze coinage, with copious supplies of large bronze coins available for the first time since the reign of Julian the Apostate (see JULIAN II). Their design also radically differed from all previous Roman coinage to an extant such that their introduction is usually taken as the break-point between Roman and Byzantine coinage.

Anastasius' frugal economic policies apparently led to a war with the Sasanians in 503, when he refused to pay the Empire's share of the cost of defense of the pass of Derbend in the Caucasus Mountains, a route usually taken by nomadic tribes in their raids on both the Sasanians and the eastern reaches of the Roman Empire. The war didn't go well for the Romans until the latter stages, but internal upheavals in the Sasanian Empire forced the Sasanians to conclude a peace in 505 which basically restored the old borders.

The Bulgarians, descendants of the Huns, invaded the Empire in 499, 502, and again in 517. Anastasius' response was to build yet another set of walls for Constantinopolis (its third) sometime between 499 and 507. This eleven-foot-thick wall, called the Long Wall, was built forty miles west of the capital and ran forty-one miles from the Propontis to the Pontus Euxinus (Black Sea).

Religious problems continued to plague Anastasius throughout his reign, with the generally orthodox population of the capital at odds with their Monophysite-leaning Emperor, with serious rioting in November of 512 leading to an abdication offer by Anastasius, which the mobs strangely refused. In 513 Vitalian, the "Comes Foederates" (Count of the Federates) in  Thrace, rebelled and claimed to be the champion of orthodoxy. From 513 to 515 he lead three assaults on Constantinopolis, being repelled each time, twice with great loss of life.  In 515 he was finally defeated, although he seems to have survived to cause trouble again shortly before Anastasius' death in 518.

The Empress Ariadne died in 515, and Anastasius survived her by three years, dying of natural causes at the age of about eighty-eight on the evening of July 9, 518, without naming a successor.

Although historians often date the start of the Byzantine Empire at either the dedication of Constantinople (330 AD - making Constantine I the first Byzantine Emperor), the split of the Roman Empire at the death of Theodosius I (395 AD - making Arcadius the first Byzantine Emperor), or even at the fall of the western Roman Empire (476 AD - making Zeno the first Byzantine Emperor), numismatically the break is clearly in the reign of Anastasius, specifically at his previously mentioned coinage reform of 498. That reform was a radical re-structuring of the bronze coinage, and a sharp departure from previous Roman designs. Although the pre- and post-reform silver and gold are indistinguishable, the vast bulk of the coinage, what the 'man-in-the-street' dealt with, was clearly symbolic of a new beginning, and thus Moneta ends its coverage of Roman coinage with Anastasius.


DICTIONARY OF ROMAN COINS


Please add updates or make corrections to the NumisWiki text version as appropriate.


ANASTASIUS I, A.D.491 - 518.
Emperor of the East, Anastasius was born c.A.D.430 at Dyrrhachium in Illyria, of obscure parentage. Although only a silentiary (usher) at the Imperial household, on the death of Zeno he was selected by Ariadne, the late emperor 's widow, to succeed to the Byzantine throne and, six weeks after being crowned by the patriarch, he and Ariadne were married (A.D.491).
  During his rule, Anastasius paid particular attention to the Empire 's finances, carrying out, in A.D.498, a monetary reform which saw bronze coins of a respectable size being once again issued in quantity. These coins broke with the traditions of the Roman coinage as each bore its mark of value in Greek on the reverse (e.g. M = 40 nummia, K = 20 nummia, I = 10 nummia etc). 
  His reign was unfortunately marred, due to his unorthodox religious views, by frequent riots which, in A.D.513, culminated in an armed uprising in Thrace.
 Anastasius died in his eighties, three years after Ariadne, on July 9th, A.D.518, some sources have said that he was struck by lightning.
 On his coins, which are generally common in gold and bronze, he is styled D N ANASTASIVS P P AVG. His silver coins are rare, particularly those where he is associated, on the same coin, with the name of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths or with Baduila, another barbarian king.


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