1 Tremissis Torso with fifteen sections

Struck in the Lombard duchy that controlled much of central Italy following the invasion of 568, these tremisses were issued under dukes who nominally acknowledged Lombard royal authority while operating with considerable independence. The "torso with fifteen sections" type belongs to a poorly understood sequence of late seventh-century pseudo-imperial gold that increasingly departed from Byzantine prototypes — the degradation of imagery was not incompetence but a deliberate, gradual assertion of local identity as Byzantine reconquest became a fading threat. MEC I places this firmly within the Lucca or Pisa mint horizon, though attribution remains contested.