40 Nummi - Justinian I Antioch, tHЄЧP, Bust Facing

By the time this issue was struck, Antioch had endured decades of catastrophe: sacked by the Sasanians under Khosrow I in 540, devastated by plague in 542, and then leveled by earthquake in 526 and again in 528. The city Justinian resettled and rebuilt was substantially renamed Theopolis — "City of God" — which accounts for the mint signature on this coin. Production here was fitful, dependent on a recovering urban infrastructure and a population that had been reduced to a fraction of its former size.

The regnal years covered by this emission correspond to Justinian's final years, when the great legislative and military programs had largely exhausted the treasury.