Leontius (Byzantine)

A career officer of Isaurian origin, Leontius had served as strategos of the Anatolikon theme under Constantine IV and led the eastern field army against the Caliphate before falling out with Justinian II, who imprisoned him in 692 on suspicion of dynastic ambition. Released and appointed strategos of Hellas in the spring of 695, he turned his commission into a revolt within weeks, marched on Constantinople, and deposed Justinian II in a near-bloodless coup — sparing the deposed emperor's life on the patriarch's intercession but slitting his nose, the act that gave Justinian his historical epithet Rhinotmetos, before exiling him to Cherson on the Crimean shore. The reign lasted three years and was undone by a single failure: the fall of Carthage to the Umayyad Arabs in 698. The relief fleet sent under the droungarios Apsimar mutinied on the return voyage, declared Apsimar emperor as Tiberius III (Tiberios Apsimaros), sailed back to the capital, and deposed Leontius in turn. Mutilated in the same manner he had inflicted on Justinian, Leontius was confined in the Monastery of Dalmatou for the next seven years and executed in February 706 after Justinian II returned from Cherson and reclaimed the throne.

The numismatic record of the reign carries two consequences that outlast it. First, the Christ Pantocrator obverse on the solidus — introduced by Justinian II in 692 and kept on Leontius's own coinage from 695 to 698 even though Leontius had personally overthrown and disfigured the man who put it there — is the documentary evidence that the iconographic decision was understood as theological rather than personal: a successor regime that had every political reason to repudiate Justinian's reforms kept the Christ obverse intact, and the convention then survived the Tiberius III interlude before Justinian II returned in 705 and reinstated his own version of it. Second, the abrupt end of the KART mint signature in 698 is the numismatic register of the fall of Carthage to Hassan ibn al-Nu'man — the largest single territorial loss of the late-seventh century and the end of nearly a millennium of continuous Mediterranean coin striking on the African shore, with the next regional gold output not appearing until the Aghlabid dinars of the ninth century.

Key Events

Coinage

Three reign-years and a mint network already contracting under the Umayyad pressure of the 690s produced one of the scarcer Byzantine output bodies of the late seventh century. The Constantinople solidus is the surface that defines the reign visually: Leontius stands frontal in chlamys, beardless and short-haired in a tight crown, holding an akakia (the silk-purse ceremonial bundle) in one hand and a cross-on-globe in the other — the standing-emperor obverse breaks with the seated and frontal bust patterns Justinian II had used and reads as a return to the late-Heraclian standing-figure type. The reverse keeps the Christ Pantocrator bust that Justinian II had introduced on his first reign in 692 — three years of issue earlier — with the legend D IhS XPS REX REGNANTIVM still in place under Leontius. The continuity matters because Leontius personally overthrew Justinian and physically mutilated him: that the iconographic decision to put Christ on the obverse position of the solidus survived the regime change is the documentary point. The bronze follis carries the standing figure obverse, large M reverse, and the Constantinopolitan mint mark CON in officinae A through Є, with subsidiary half-folles in K. Carthage struck gold and bronze in Leontius's name from 695 until the city fell in 698, signing KART in the standard Byzantine vocabulary; the Carthage globular solidi of these three years are particularly scarce and are the last imperial gold ever struck on African soil. Syracuse (SCL) produced a small bronze run, Ravenna (RAV) struck a few attested solidi, and Sardinia (S) appears on a rare residual issue. The reference framework is Grierson's Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection Vol. II, Part 2 (Phocas to Theodosius III, 1968) and Sear's Byzantine Coins and Their Values (2nd ed., 1987) — Sear 1330–1346 covers the reign.

Collecting Guide

Before any price work, screen out the wrong Leontius: dealer descriptions and older auction catalogues conflate this Byzantine emperor (AD 695–698) with the AD 484–488 Roman usurper of the same name under Zeno, and the obverse legend (D LЄO PЄ AV on the Byzantine emperor versus the fifth-century Roman forms) is the quickest discriminator. Once that screen is clear, work the attribution against DOC Vol. II.2 (Grierson 1968) and Sear's Byzantine Coins and Their Values — NumisLens carries no per-emperor record for the seventh-century Heraclian gold. Within that framework, the price structure of the reign is set first and foremost by supply: three years of issue, a mint network contracting under Arab pressure, and no period of large-scale monetisation means every Leontius type is scarce relative to its longer-reigned neighbours, and the gold sits in a noticeably narrower auction band than Justinian II first-reign or Tiberius III material of comparable workmanship. Constantinople solidi clear at roughly $1,500–$4,000 in VF and $4,000–$8,000 in choice EF at CNG, Roma, Künker, Heritage, and Leu, with the standing-emperor obverse and the Christ Pantocrator reverse both in clear strike commanding the upper end. Carthage globular solidi from the 695–698 mint window are scarcer still — the last imperial African gold — and routinely cross the $3,000–$7,000 line. Silver hexagrams of the reign are uncommon: $1,000–$2,500 when offered, and most cycles pass without one in the major sales. The Constantinople follis appears infrequently in collectable grade and runs $200–$600, with the Sardinia and Ravenna small-bronze issues at a strong scarcity premium above that.

Market Overview

Leontius is a specialist segment within the late-seventh-century Byzantine market — a short-reign usurper with a memorable political narrative and the Christ-iconography continuity that interests both Byzantine numismatists and historians of imperial iconography. Cross-collector demand is unusually high for a three-year reign, drawn from two adjacent fields: Justinian II completionists who pursue the man who deposed him as part of the broader Rhinotmetos cycle, and Heraclian-dynasty specialists who close their cabinets with the Leontius–Tiberius III–Justinian II second reign sequence. Provenance from the named twentieth-century Byzantine cabinets matters disproportionately on the gold given the small available supply, and a documented DOC Vol. II.2 pedigree or a Carthage solidus with an attested find-spot is worth examining carefully before any bid.

Related Resources

Further Reading

• Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection, Vol. II, Part 2 — Phocas to Theodosius III (602–717), Philip Grierson
• Byzantine Coins and Their Values (2nd edition), David R. Sear
• Byzantium in the Seventh Century: The Transformation of a Culture, John F. Haldon