Attractive Gepid Quarter Siliqua

332, Lot: 440. Estimate $500. Sold for $800. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

GEPIDS. 518-526. AR Quarter Siliqua (15mm, 0.76 g, 6h). In the names of Justin I and Theoderic the Great. Sirmium mint. D И IVSTINVS P P AVG, pearl-diademed and cuirassed bust of Justin I right / VIИVICTA AROMAИI (for INVICTA ROMA), cross above monogram of Theoderic. Demo 122; MEC 1, –. EF, toned. Rare and attractive for issue.

Ex Gorny & Mosch 216 (15 Ocotber 2013), lot 3567.

The Gepids were a sub-tribe of the Goths who began arriving in Dacia in the AD 260s and spread throughout the Balkans before invading Italy in the wake of collapsing Roman power in the late 5th century AD. For the most part, the Gepids were merely vassals of the greater Ostrogothic or Hunnic tribes, but from AD 454, when they defeated the Huns at Nadeo, to AD 552, when they were displaced by the Lombards, the Gepids possessed a state of their own in the region of the Carpathians and around Sirmium. Rare silver siliquae and quarter siliquae are attributed to the Gepids during this period.