Ave!

GEPIDS, AR Quarter Siliqua, Very Rare!

In the names of Byzantine Emperor Anastasius (491-518 AD) and Theoderic the Great, King of the Ostrogoths (493- 526 AD). Sirmium mint, ca. 5th Century AD

Good Silver; 16mm x 1mm / 0.70gm

Con/ Extremely Fine. Perfectly centered on a broad flan and sharply struck. Actually, too sharply struck! As noted above, the flan is only one mm thick. Accordingly, nearly all such quarter siliquae share the same attributes as ours: slightly wavy, with flan cracks and ragged edges. Very Rare and attractive for the issue.

Obv/  D N ANASTASIVS P AV; pearl-diademed and cuirassed bust of Anastasius right

Rev/ INVICTA ARVMANA (for INVICTA ROMA); monogram of Theoderic, cross above, star below

Ref/ MEC 1, p. 36; Demo 122 (Sirmium)

Seller's Note/ The Gepids were a sub-tribe of the Goths who began arriving in Dacia in the AD 260s and spread throughout the Balkans before invading Italy in the wake of collapsing Roman power in the late 5th century AD. For the most part, the Gepids were merely vassals of the greater Ostrogothic or Hunnic tribes, but from AD 454, when they defeated the Huns at Nadeo, to AD 552, when they were displaced by the Lombards, the Gepids possessed a state of their own in the region of the Carpathians and around Sirmium. During that era, the Gepids began to strike their own imitations of Theodoric imitations of Anastasius!