Anastasius II

Anastasius II began the reign not as a soldier or as a member of the imperial family but as Artemius the protoasecretis — head of the imperial chancery in Constantinople — and was acclaimed in June 713 after the army deposed and blinded Philippicus Bardanes in the Hippodrome. The two-year reign reads almost entirely as administrative preparation for a war that did not arrive on his watch: intelligence from the eastern frontier indicated that the caliph Sulayman was assembling the army and fleet that would attempt the great siege of Constantinople, and Anastasius II devoted the available time to grain stockpiling inside the walls, a refit of the imperial fleet, the restoration of Orthodox doctrine in repudiation of Philippicus's revived Monothelitism, and the appointment of competent military commanders to the eastern themes. The preparation worked. The execution did not. In 715 he sent a pre-emptive expedition to Rhodes against the Arab naval staging area; the Opsikion troops mutinied at Rhodes, sailed to the Anatolian coast, acclaimed an unwilling provincial tax-collector named Theodosius as emperor, and marched on Constantinople. Anastasius II abdicated after a six-month standoff, took monastic vows at Thessalonica, and lived there four further years before attempting a return in 719 against Leo III with Bulgar support — an attempt that ended with his execution outside the walls and his head sent to Leo on the same day.

Two readings carry weight beyond the political arc. The first is dynastic: Anastasius II is the last of the post-Heraclian succession of short-reign emperors (Justinian II's second reign, Philippicus, Anastasius II, Theodosius III) before Leo III's accession in 717 closes the period and opens the Isaurian dynasty, and his Constantinople solidus is therefore the terminal Heraclian-era iconographic instance — the Christ Pantocrator reverse from Justinian II's 692 reform reaching its last issue before the Isaurian gold reverts to the cross-on-steps in 717. The second is operational: the surviving siege-preparation bronze and the grain-stockpile administrative record together document a state mobilizing in metal for what would become the Second Arab Siege of Constantinople in 717–718, the defining strategic reversal of the Umayyad westward expansion, even though the siege itself was met and defeated under Leo III rather than under the emperor who had paid for its preparation.

Key Events

Coinage

Two years of mint output produced a small and tightly bracketed coinage, and the practical evidence is concentrated at Constantinople with thin tails at Syracuse and Ravenna — the late-seventh-century western mint network had already contracted sharply by the time Anastasius II took the throne and would contract further under Leo III. The standard reign issue is the Constantinople solidus showing the emperor in chlamys facing, bearded, holding the globus cruciger and akakia, with the reverse retaining the Christ Pantocrator iconography that Justinian II had introduced on his first reign in 692 — an iconographic continuity that ties Anastasius II's gold directly into the visual programme of the last Heraclian-era reform and that makes his solidi read, at first glance, as a continuation of that earlier series rather than as a new departure. The fractional gold (semissis and tremissis) and the bronze (M-follis and K-half-follis) follow the same pattern of a known type executed across a small number of officinas. The silver hexagram, which had been struck in volume by Heraclius and Constans II, is here a rarity — the issue exists but appears in the major auction sales in single-digit examples per decade. The historical value of the issues that survive sits in what they document: a state mobilizing its bullion for the war that would, under his successors, become the Second Arab Siege of 717–718 and one of the defining military reversals of the medieval Mediterranean. The reference framework is Grierson's Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection Vol. II.2 (Phocas to Theodosius III, 1968) and Sear's Byzantine Coins and Their Values (2nd ed., 1987) for the working pricing reference; nothing more recent supersedes DOC for this reign.

Collecting Guide

Closing the Anastasius II gap in a late-Heraclian-era cabinet is one of the harder tasks in the period and the first job is screening for dies cut to the right level: the two-year reign and contracted mint network mean that a misattributed Tiberius III or Justinian II second-reign piece can slip into a sale catalogued as Anastasius II if the obverse legend is corroded, and the working defence is DOC Vol. II.2 (Grierson 1968) and Sear's Byzantine Coins and Their Values — there is no per-emperor NumisLens catalogue for this stretch of the Heraclian succession. Constantinople solidi are the realistic acquisition path, clearing in the $1,200–$3,000 band in VF and reaching $3,500–$6,000 in choice EF at CNG, Roma, Künker, Leu, and Nomos; the better-style obverse dies (cleaner Artemius portrait, sharp Pantocrator reverse) carry a clear specialist premium beyond grade. Silver hexagrams are rare enough that any specimen of recognisable style will reach a four-figure hammer when one appears, and several years can pass between sales. Folles are uncommon rather than rare, sitting at $300–$700 in VF for Constantinople and a thinner market for Syracuse; the regnal-year exergue (ANNO I or II) is the secondary axis of selection for collectors closing the late-Heraclian sequence year by year.

Market Overview

Anastasius II material moves in the specialist completionist segment of the Byzantine market — the typical buyer is closing the late-Heraclian-era succession from Justinian II's second reign through Theodosius III as a coherent two-decade sequence rather than acquiring the emperor on his own merits. Cross-collector demand is real but narrow, pulled from two non-Byzantine fields: historians of the Second Arab Siege of 717–718 who track the preparation-of-Constantinople programme through the surviving bronze, and Isaurian-dynasty-transition specialists who pair the terminal Pantocrator-reverse solidus against Leo III's reversion to the cross-on-steps reverse in 717 as a numismatic marker of the dynastic break. Provenance from the named twentieth-century Byzantine cabinets carries a durable premium on the gold; a documented DOC pedigree on a Constantinople solidus is worth examining before any serious bid.

Related Resources

Further Reading

• Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection, Vol. II.2 — Phocas to Theodosius III (602–717), Philip Grierson
• Byzantine Coins and Their Values (2nd edition), David R. Sear
• The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In, Hugh Kennedy