1/4 Siliqua In the name of Justinian I, With stars, curly hair

The Lombards entered Italy in 568 under Alboin, filling the vacuum left by the Byzantine-Gothic wars that had gutted the peninsula's population and administrative infrastructure. For generations afterward, Lombard rulers issued silver fractions in the name of the reigning Eastern emperor — not out of submission, but because Byzantine coinage was the commercial lingua franca of the Mediterranean and imitation was economically pragmatic. The practice persisted long after any pretense of imperial authority over Lombard territory had collapsed.

The "curly hair" attribute distinguishes this die grouping from the smoother-portrait variants catalogued under the same reign attribution.