1 Tremissis In the name of Justinian I, Crossed tassels, hanging

The Lombards entered Italy in 568 under Alboin, displacing Byzantine administrative structures with remarkable speed but lacking the minting infrastructure to produce a fully independent coinage. For well over a century, they continued striking gold tremisses invoking Justinian I — dead since 565 — not out of political deference but because his name carried commercial credibility across Mediterranean trade networks that Lombard rulers could not yet replace with their own.

The crossed tassels type is understood as a distinctly Lombard modification, marking a gradual drift from Byzantine prototypes toward something functionally autonomous. The "cf." qualifiers on both Arslan and MEC I suggest this particular die combination sits outside the cleanly documented sequence.