Sale: Triton VIII, Lot: 1291. Estimate $300.  Closing Date: Monday, 10 January 2005.  Sold For $490. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

UNCERTAIN GERMANIC ISSUES. North Italy or Balkans. Imitating Roman Emperor Zeno. Circa 474-491 AD. AV Tremissis (1.50 gm, 6h). dN ZENO PERP d, pearl-diademed, draped, and cuirassed bust right / VICTORVOP CVSTORYN (legend retrograde, with garbled letters), Victory advancing right, holding wreath and globus cruciger; star in right field, CONOC. Cf. RIC X 914 for prototype, otherwise apparently unpublished. EF. ($300)

This issue has stylistic similarities with a number of Dark Age issues, particularly from Northern Italy. Its degraded legends, however, discount a more traditional group such as the Ostrogoths or Lombards, and suggest an attribution to the Gepids. The Gepids were a sub-tribe of the Goths who began arriving in Dacia in the 260's AD, 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 454 AD, when they defeated the Huns at Nadeo, to 552 AD, when they were displaced by the Lombards, the Gepids possessed a state of their own in the region of the Carpathians and around Sirmium. Silver siliquae are attributed to the Gepids in this period, and this gold tremissis resembles some of those issues, which also display similarly degraded legends.