Sale: CNG 79, Lot: 1265. Estimate $500.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 17 September 2008.  Sold For $650. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Coin Weight. Late 5th-mid-6th centuries. Æ Exagium Solidi Weight (4.16 g). Weight is a reused Roman provincial Æ of Koinon Bythinias of Hadrian (cf. SNG Copenhagen 327) with reverse design and much of ethnic remaining. Obverse has engraved Ιωαννου monogram with cross above, all inlaid with silver. Cf. Bendall, Weights p. 12 (for reuse of earlier coins as weights) and p. 65, monogram 43 (for monogram type). Good VF. Rare.

During the later Roman Empire, coin weights began appearing with the legend exagium solidi, a phrase which has often been translated as “the weight (or weighing) of a solidus”, in order to deal with the practice of clipping. Exagium derives from the Latin exigere (lit. “to drive out”). However, extant examples of these weights vary and some weigh much less than the 4.5 g of a full-weight solidus. These lower-weight weights are thought to possibly represent the lowest acceptable weight for aurei, and were used by the exauctores auri to withdraw under-weight solidi from circulation and thereby maintain an acceptable weight standard minimum for solidi to circulate at full value. To date, the majority of the known weights bear imperial busts, rather than the monogram of the eparch, under whose authority the exauctores auri operated; those that do have the eparchs’ monograms were of glass. It is difficult to determine with more accuracy whether the Ιωαννες mentioned here is the eparch of Constantinople (John the Cappadocian or John of Epidamonos are possibilities), or a similar official at Antioch or Alexandria (a Johannes is known to have served twice as prefect between 582 and 602).