2 1/2 Nummi - Baduila / In the name of Anastasius I, 491-518 Ticinum

Baduila — also known as Totila — struck these fractional bronzes at Ticinum (modern Pavia) during his decade-long campaign to reverse Justinian's reconquest of Italy. The fiction of Anastasius I's name on the coinage, decades after that emperor's death in 518, was a deliberate legitimizing gesture: Ostrogothic rulers routinely issued coins in the names of eastern emperors to maintain the pretense of operating within imperial sanction. By the time Baduila was striking at Ticinum, that pretense was wearing thin — he was fighting a losing war against Narses that would end with his death at the Battle of Taginae in 552.