Sale: Triton VIII, Lot: 1426. Estimate $7500.  Closing Date: Monday, 10 January 2005.  Sold For $6500. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

CONSTANTINE VII, Porphyrogenitus, with Romanus I and Christopher. 921-931 AD. AV Solidus (4.39 gm, 7h). Constantinople mint. Struck 921 AD. +X'E bOHQEI ROMANW dECPOTH, Romanus standing facing, wearing crown and loros, holding globus cruciger, extending hand towards Christ, who is standing facing, crowning Romanus and holding Gospels / CONSTANT' ET XPISTOF' b'R', crowned facing busts of Constantine VII, wearing loros, and Christopher, wearing chlamys, holding patriarchal cross between them. DOC III 6; SB 1743. Good VF. Rare. ($7500)

This rare solidus serves to legitimize the creeping usurpation of the rule of the senior emperor Constantine VII by the family of Romanus. Constantine inherited from his uncle Alexander, the first to use the coronation type. Romanus, a strategos of the army, married his daughter to Constantine and in short order became basileopator, caesar and joint emperor, finally naming his sons co-emperors. Christopher was the first, in May 921, and this solidus implies that his elevation comes through the heavenly blessings on the reign of Romanus, not through the technically senior emperor Constantine VII.