Heraclius was the son of the governor of North Africa, who revolted agains the Byzantine emperor Phocas. After two years of dreadful fighting he assumed the purple himself. His reign was an eventful one. On his watch, the mighty Persian empire came to an end, and the hungry Arab empire filled the void, eventually taking Syria, Egypt and Palestine from the Byzantines. In time, the invading Muslims would take more and more until there was nothing left. While that was more than 800 years in the future, it began with Heraclius.

The emperor made many changes in how the empire run, but the one perhaps he should be most noted for was abolishing Latin as the official language, and replacing it with Greek. Heraclius was no longer called Augustus or Imperator, the old Roman titles, but Basileus, which is Greek. In a manner of speaking, this is the end of Roman history as Augustus, or Marcus Aurelius, or even Constantine would have known it.

The coin has another interesting tale to tell. What, pray tell, is a half-siliqua? The siliqua was a Constantinian replacement for the ailing denarius, which was no longer struck by the end of the third century AD. A new coin, the argentus, only survived a brief while, perhaps becuase as a relatively large coin and fairly pure silver, it was too valuable. The siliqua was about 2 gms. and highly successful. All the same, inflation led in the 330's to a "reduced" siliqua of about two/thirds the weight. This interested me because at that weight, instead of there being 24 of the old siliqua to a pound of silver, there would be 36 of the new siliqua. It made perfect sense in view of the circulation of another, heavier silver coin called the hexagram. Six hexagram were valued the same as one gold solidus. If 36 siliqua were worth one solidus, then 6 siliqua must be worth on hexagram. It all fit together in my head, and when I asked an expert I knew, I was told I had deduced correctly.

That's the wonderful thing about coin collecting. You always have more to learn, and you can make many of the discoveries through your own detective work and inference.