Ravenna: From Imperial Capital to Byzantine Outpost (original) (raw)

IN 402 CE, THE dim-witted 17-year-old emperor Honorius moved the capital of the Roman Empire in the West from the fortress city of Mediolanum (Milan) to the town of Ravenna on the Adriatic south of Venice. Surrounded by marshes, the city was hard to besiege but lacked a reliable supply of fresh water, prompting the quip by Bishop Sidonius: vivi sitiunt sepulti natant ("the living thirst while the buried swim"). Changes in the shoreline leave Ravenna inland today, but in the fifth century it was a major naval base. For centuries the town was an important mint, and the fascinating coinage of Ravenna documents a turbulent era of late Antiquity. The coins fall into three periods: Late Western Roman (402-476), Ostrogothic (476-540) and Byzantine (540-751).