Heraclius

Son of the Exarch of Africa, Heraclius sailed from Carthage in the summer of 610 with a Latin-speaking fleet, deposed and executed the usurper Phocas in October, and inherited an empire already half-collapsed under Sasanian invasion — Antioch, Damascus, Jerusalem, and Alexandria all fell in the first decade of his reign, and the relic of the True Cross was taken to Ctesiphon. The recovery, when it came, was on a scale the Byzantine state would not match again: a Caucasus counter-invasion in 622, an alliance with the Khazars, the defeat of Khosrow II's army at Nineveh in December 627, and a negotiated return of the eastern provinces and the True Cross in 629–630. The respite lasted six years. In August 636 at the Yarmouk, the army Heraclius had rebuilt was destroyed by the Rashidun Caliphate; Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia were lost within four years and Egypt the year after his death. The coinage carries every phase of that arc — the dynastic solidi showing the emperor with his sons that establish the visual template of Byzantine succession-portraiture, the wartime introduction of the silver hexagram in roughly 615 with the legend Deus adiuta Romanis, and the year-dated M-folles that continue through both the Persian and the Arab campaigns from a mint network that contracts in real time as the eastern territories are lost.

Two technical decisions taken under wartime pressure outlive the reign by centuries. The introduction of the silver hexagram in roughly 615 documents the moment Byzantine silver re-enters the active coinage system after more than a hundred years of effective gold-and-bronze bimetallism; the denomination is kept by every Heraclian successor down to Justinian II and is the direct ancestor of the silver miliaresion that Leo III re-engineers in the 720s. The three-bust dynastic solidus of c. 632–641, with Heraclius flanked by Heraclius Constantine and Heraclonas, establishes the multi-figure imperial-succession portrait that the Macedonian and Komnenian dynasties continue to deploy on gold for the next four centuries — the iconographic template of Byzantine co-rulership begins on Heraclius's late-reign Constantinopolitan gold.

Key Events

Coinage

Heraclius's coinage divides naturally into three war-narrative phases, and the technical innovations of the reign sit at the inflection points between them. The first phase (610 to roughly 615) inherits the late-sixth-century vocabulary of Phocas and Maurice — single-bust solidus with cross potent on steps reverse, K-denominated half-folles, year-dated M-folles in the Justinianic tradition — and runs on traditional gold-and-bronze bimetallism with vestigial silver. The introduction of the silver hexagram in roughly 615, struck on a thick six-gram module with the legend DEVS ADIVTA ROMANIS (God help the Romans) wrapped around a cross potent on globe on steps, opens the second phase: a wartime trimetallic system in which silver returns to the active coinage for the first time since the early Anastasian period, monetizing army stipends at a scale that gold and bronze alone could no longer cover. The same phase carries the dynastic solidi — first Heraclius with his eldest son Heraclius Constantine after the coronation of January 613, then from roughly 632 the three-bust issue with both sons (Heraclius Constantine on the left, Heraclonas on the right) flanking the bearded emperor in the centre, a portrait composition that becomes the visual template of Byzantine succession-imagery for the next four centuries. The third phase, from roughly 632 forward, runs against the contracting mint network: the year-dated M-folles continue from Constantinople and Thessalonica through both the Persian recovery and the Arab catastrophe, but Antioch (THEUP) closes definitively after the Arab conquest of Syria in 637–638, the Alexandrian YL counterstrikes that briefly circulated during the Sasanian occupation give way to the mint's permanent closure with the Arab capture of the city, and only Carthage (KART) and the Italian mints (Ravenna, Rome, Syracuse) sustain Byzantine output across the western Mediterranean into the next reign. Grierson's Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection Vol. II.1 (1968) covers Heraclius and is the standard reference; Sear's Byzantine Coins and Their Values (2nd ed., 1987) carries the working price reference.

Collecting Guide

Heraclius gold appears at CNG, Roma, Künker, Heritage, and Leu in every catalogue cycle, with the single-bust Constantinople solidus from the pre-dynastic phase (610 to c. 613) and the early dynastic period the steadiest recurring offering. That depth of supply is what makes the three-phase reign structure legible in market data at all. The working references are DOC Vol. II.1 (Grierson 1968) and Sear's Byzantine Coins and Their Values; NumisLens does not maintain a per-emperor catalogue for the Heraclian gold. Single-bust Constantinople solidi from the pre-dynastic and early dynastic phases sit in the $400–$1,200 band in VF, with the cleaner-style late-reign three-bust solidi commanding a clear premium — the canonical Heraclius–Constantine–Heraclonas issue routinely opens above $1,500 in VF and well past $3,000 in EF, and well-centred specimens with all three portraits crisp are among the most-pursued Byzantine gold of the seventh century. Silver hexagrams with the DEVS ADIVTA ROMANIS legend are widely collected as a category of their own — strong-VF Constantinople pieces sit at $500–$2,000, with the better-style examples climbing well above that and the scarce early-issue varieties carrying a documented premium. Year-dated folles are abundant for Constantinople and Thessalonica in middle-reign years (Heraclius's regnal years 4–20) at $40–$150 in VF, but the wartime-frontier mints carry their own market: late Antioch (THEUP) issues from the years immediately before the Persian sack and immediately after the 628 recovery, and the Carthage (KART) and Italian-mint output across both wars, sit at substantial premia.

Market Overview

Heraclius is one of the deepest single-emperor Byzantine markets by volume, with cross-collector demand pulling from three directions that no other seventh-century emperor reaches simultaneously: Sasanian collectors who buy the reign as the paired Roman side of Khosrow II's regnal-year drachms, early-Islamic specialists who collect the late-reign and post-reign bronze as the immediate precursor to the Arab-Byzantine series, and Crusades-era and biblical-history collectors who attach the True Cross episode to the dated material of the recovery years 629–630. Provenance from the named twentieth-century Byzantine cabinets — Bertelè, Hunt, Sigler, Grierson — lifts hammer prices materially on the dynastic gold and on the early-issue hexagrams in particular, and a documented DOC II.1 pedigree on a three-bust solidus or a wartime Antioch follis is worth examining closely before any bid.

Related Resources

Further Reading

• Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection, Vol. II.1 — Phocas to Theodosius III (602–717), Philip Grierson
• Byzantine Coins and Their Values (2nd edition), David R. Sear
• Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium, Walter E. Kaegi