Solidus - Constantine IV, Tiberius and Heraclius

Constantine IV's reign opened with a defining military crisis: the first Arab siege of Constantinople, which lasted intermittently from 674 to 678. The Byzantine fleet's deployment of Greek fire against the Umayyad navy during those campaigns effectively ended the immediate threat and bought the empire another eight centuries. The triple-portrait coinage issued during his reign reflects a co-emperorship arrangement inherited from his father Constans II, who had insisted on the elevation of his younger sons Tiberius and Heraclius as junior emperors.

Constantine later had both brothers mutilated and removed from succession — a detail that gives the shared portraiture on this solidus an uncomfortable retrospective quality.