W. C a r e w H a z l i t t Coinage of the European Continent

Descriptive Outline of the Coinages of Europe 419
to strike money in all metals on the existing models and
;
their mints were Rome, Pavia, and Ravenna. We observe a
stealthy process, by which these princes gradually
Ostr^oths re pl aced the monogram by their full titles and
suppressed the bust and name of the reigning
emperor. Athalaric (526-34) put on his money D.N. [Domini
Nomine?] Athalaricvs Rex; and his immediate successor,
Theodahatus, evinced his sense of the growing declension
of the Roman power in the West by issuing the bronze
coinage with his own portrait, while he preserved on the
reverse the characters and types to which the people were
accustomed the winged Victory, the S.C., and so forth.
This was a somewhat daring innovation, as under the old
Roman monetary law the bronze money was beyond the
control even of the emperors, and required for its legalisation
a decree of the Senate. The bronze nummus of Theodahatus,
of which there is a very fine example in the Grantley
Cabinet, reads on obverse D.N. Theodohatvs Rex. The
portrait is executed in the same style and taste as those
accompanying the imperial aurei of this period.
The Ostrogothic series comprised the solidus and triens
in gold, the silica and -gsilica
in silver, and the 40, 20, 10,
and 5 nummi in bronze. Some of these pieces exhibit
curious legends, as Invicta Roma, Felix Ravenna, Felix
Ticinus, Victoria Prindpum, reminding us of the Romano-
British coins of Carausius and Allectus. The series of
nummi generally bear the value and a date indicated by the
regnal year in Roman numerals in the exergue a practice
imitated by the Norman rulers of Sicily.
The successors of the Ostrogoths had been invited into
Italy by the Greek Exarch of Ravenna in 558, as the
Ostrogoths were led to come thither by the
Lombards Emperor Zeno in the previous century. The
result was analogous, and the new settlers were
enabled by the growing weakness of the Greeks to make
themselves masters of the whole of the kingdom, and even
of Sicily, where they succeeded in maintaining their ground
long after the fall of the Lombard dynasty
in the north.