ABSTRACT: Bizye's coinage took place in the period 107-247 AD. During those hundred and forty years, the city mint-ed coins for six emperors and members of their families. The purpose of this study is to find out how many and what denominations Bizye’s mint used to strike for each of them. In Bizye, apart from the regular city emissions of I, II, III, IV and V nominal values, extraordinary ones were also issued – the so-called medallions.
As a conclusion drawn from the analysis of the specimens from each denomination, we found two main deviations. The first one is expressed in the variation in the average weight of coins of the same denomination issued in Bizye throughout different chronological periods. The second deviation lies in the difference in the weights of specimens of the same denomination issued for a ruler or a member of his family. The analysis we conducted shows that the metric parameters of Bizye’s coins were highest at the beginning and the end of the city’s coinage. The number of individual iconographic types and denominations of Bizye’s coins, with their met-ric parameters (weight and diameter), are directly related to the periods of economic growth as well as to the periods of crisis and instability in the Roman city.
Author information:
Yanislav Tachev
PhD in Ancient Numismatics
http://independent.academia.edu/YanislavTachev
Bulgaria
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