(131) Justin I - AV solidus, A.D. 518-527, 4.48 g. (inv. 91.269).
Obverse: Helmeted bust of Justin I three-quarter r., holding spear behind
head in r.; shield with attacking horseman on l. shoulder; D(OMINVS) N(OSTER)
IVSTINVS P(ER)P(ETVVS) AVC(VSTVS): Our lord Justin, perpetual Augustus.
Reverse: Standing angel facing, holding globus cruciger in l. and
staff with cross in r.; eight-pointed star in r. field; VICTORIA AVCCC (AVGVSTORVM
abbreviated) S: Victory of the Augusti, officina mark S; in exergue,
CONOB: gold of Constantinople.
Provenance: Hesperia Art, 1959.
Bibliography: W. Wroth, Catalogue of the Imperial Byzantine Coins in
the British Museum (London 1908); P. Grierson, Byzantine Coins
(London 1982).
Of peasant origin, Justin I rose through the ranks of the military and was
proclaimed emperor by the army in A.D. 518. A man of little learning, in
matters of policy he is thought to have relied upon the advice of his nephew,
Justinian I. He made an alliance with the papacy in Rome and restored religious
orthodoxy in the East in the wake of his predecessor's unpopular Monophysitism
or belief in the unity of the divine and human natures of Christ.
The obverse depicts Justin in the stylized portrait type established by
his predecessor, Anastasius I (see no. 130). On the reverse, however, Justin
introduced a new type. In place of the profile Victoria commonly depicted
on the reverses of earlier coins (see no. 130) is a facing angel holding
a cross-staff in his right hand and a globus cruciger or sphere with
a cross on top in his left hand. The transformation of the female Victoria
into a male angel has been accomplished by changing the Victoria's chiton
belted beneath the breasts to a chlamys belted at the waist. Roman
emperors had sometimes been depicted with the globus, a symbol of
their rule of the world, but beginning in the fifth century it acquired
the Christian cross and became a globus cruciger. The globe was apparently
symbolic; there is no evidence of the existence of such an object until
A.D. 1014, when Pope Benedict VIII had a globus cruciger made as
a coronation present for Henry II.
T.S.R.
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