1/4 Siliqua In the name of Justinian I, Without stars

The Lombards entered Italy in 568 under Alboin, displacing Byzantine authority across much of the peninsula while never fully severing the cultural habit of issuing coinage in the emperor's name — a practice that masked Lombard sovereignty behind the fiction of imperial legitimacy. This piece belongs to that long twilight, struck across a reign-span of over a century during which actual Constantinopolitan control of the issuing mints was essentially nominal. The absence of stars distinguishes it from related types and helps narrow placement within the sequence, though precise attribution within the 568–690 window remains contested among specialists.