1/4 Siliqua - Athalaric / In the name of Justinian I, 527-565 Ravenna

Athalaric became king of the Ostrogoths at age ten in 526, his mother Amalasuntha ruling as regent and deliberately educating him along Roman rather than Gothic lines — a decision that split the court and, many ancient sources suggest, contributed to his early death at eighteen in 534. This coin was struck in his name but acknowledges Justinian I as the superior authority in Constantinople, a political arrangement the Ostrogoths maintained through diplomatic necessity rather than genuine submission. The practice of issuing silver fractions citing the reigning emperor gave these pieces a legal currency across the broader late antique world that purely Gothic issues would have lacked.