Constantinople, a capital inaugurated in coin
On 11 May 330 Constantine consecrated a city bearing his name on the site of Byzantium. The event was accompanied by a commemorative issue that would circulate for twenty years.
Why there
The Bosphorus commands the passage between Europe and Asia, halfway between the two frontiers that mattered, the Danube and the Euphrates. Rome, for its part, had long been far from any front, and the emperors of the third century no longer resided there.
The new city received a Senate, grain distributions, monuments brought from all over the empire. It was conceived as a second Rome, not as a provincial capital.
Two cities on the reverses
The dedication issue pairs two types that answer each other: VRBS ROMA, with the she-wolf suckling the twins, and CONSTANTINOPOLIS, with a Victory standing on the prow of a ship. The two helmeted female busts face one another from mint to mint.
These nummi are abundant and inexpensive today. They are nonetheless one of the rare cases where one can hold in the hand the birth certificate of a city that would last eleven centuries.
A new mint
Constantinople received a mint of its own, whose mark CONS appears in the exergue. Its output grew quickly, and the centre of gravity of imperial coinage shifted eastwards — a movement that the end of our period, in 337, does no more than begin.
The solidus, created twenty years earlier, found its home there. Struck continuously at Constantinople, it would become the reference currency of the medieval Mediterranean.
Further reading
G. Dagron, Naissance d’une capitale. Constantinople et ses institutions de 330 à 451, Paris, 1974.
RIC VII, Bruun, for the dedication issues and the Constantinople mint.