The gold coinage of THE BYZANTINES

Most of us can dredge up a fact or two about Byzantium from half forgotten school history lessons. We probably recall that the Roman Emperor Constantine I, who briefly visited York (Eboracum), transferred his official residence to a city on the Bosporus (in 314 AD), and that his supporters began to call it Constantinople in his honour. It later became the capital of the Byzantine Empire. Those Eastern Romans preferred to speak Greek rather than Latin, though they retained Roman inscriptions on their coins for centuries. They also favoured, and later officially adopted, Christianity over Rome’s pagan deities.

However, when it came to currency, they clung tenaciously