Leo III the "Isaurian", with Constantine V. 717-741. AV Solidus (20mm, 4.44 g, 6h). Constantinople mint. Struck circa 737-741. EF.

CNG Feature Auction 133
Lot: 688. Estimated: $ 750

Byzantine, Coin-in-Hand Video, Gold

Sold For $ 1 900. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Go to Live

Leo III the "Isaurian", with Constantine V. 717-741. AV Solidus (20mm, 4.44 g, 6h). Constantinople mint. Struck circa 737-741. Crowned facing bust of Leo, wearing chlamys, holding globus cruciger and akakia; Δ at end of legend / Crowned facing bust of Constantine, wearing chlamys, holding globus cruciger and akakia; B at end of legend. DOC 7b var. (unlisted “officina”); Füeg 7.D.4; SB 1504. Toned, some luster. EF. Very rare with these terminal letters. Only three cited by Füeg in his corpus.

From the Best Collection of Byzantine Coins. Ex Glenn W. Woods inventory 02824 (14 August 2003).

Leo III proved to be a more capable ruler than most of his recent predecessors. He successfully defended Constantinople from the Arab forces and subsequently defeated them decisively at the battle of Akroinon in Phrygia. He is, however, more well known as the promulgator of the first iconoclastic controversy. The iconoclasts were strictly opposed to the use of religious icons in worship and went so far as to destroy sacred works of religious art in their zealous prescription of their policies. The controversy was more pronounced later in Leo’s reign but was continued fervently by his son and successor Constantine V who was given the moniker, Copronymos, i.e. “the dung-named,” by his later detractors for reportedly befouling his baptismal font.

The final winners of all CNG Feature Auction 133 lots will be determined at the live online sale that will be held on 15-16 September 2026.

CNG Feature Auction 133 – Session Three – Lot 595-896 will be held Wednesday morning, 16 September 2026 beginning at 9:00 AM ET.

Winning bids are subject to a 22.5% buyer's fee for bids placed on this website and 25% for all others.

We recognize that our users may have various Internet Browsers and Operating Systems. We like our visitors to have the best possible experience when using our bidding platform. However, we do recognize that it is impossible to develop applications that work identically, efficiently and effectively on all web browsers. The CNG bidding platform supports the latest stable major version and stable previous version of Chrome and Firefox.