1/2 Siliqua - Theia / In the name of Anastasius I, 491-518 Ticinum

Theia's half siliqua from Ticinum belongs to one of the most compressed and violent episodes in Gothic Italy's collapse. Theia was the last Ostrogothic king, elected by the army after Totila's death at the Battle of Busta Gallorum in 552. He ruled for months at most before dying at the Battle of Mons Lactarius, where the Gothic force, surrounded and exhausted, reportedly fought in shifts because the dead were too numerous to clear from the field.

Coinage in Anastasius I's name persisted as a convention long after his death in 518, a fiction of imperial legitimacy the Goths maintained throughout their Italian tenure. By 552, that fiction was days from extinction.