Maurice, 582-602, Follis

Maurice Tiberius, Follis, AE, AD 582–602; struck Year 1 (AD 582/583), Constantinople; 12.34 g, 30 mm. Obv. D N TIBER MAVRC PP AV; helmeted and cuirassed facing bust holding globus cruciger and shield, cross on helmet. Rev. Large M (40 nummi); ANNO to left, I to right; cross above; mintmark of Constantinople in exergue. Struck at Constantinople in the first regnal year; active bronze disease on the reverse. Sear Byzantine 492.

Maurice Tiberius was a career general whose reign saw the creation of the exarchates and sustained campaigns against the Avars and Persians; his fiscal austerity provoked a mutiny that led to his overthrow by Phocas in 602, an event used by Khosrow II as a pretext for the protracted Roman–Persian war. The Constantinople folles with large M and regnal dating are a principal series for late 6th-century monetary chronology, with Year 1 issues marking the start of his reign under the metropolitan mint.