The Last Roman: Peasant to Emperor

Interesting exhibition at the Barber Institute of Fine Art in Birmingham looking at the last Roman emperor, Justinian, via the coinage of the time.
 
The show included reproductions of the lovely mosaics of Justinian and his wife Theodora from Ravenna as well as maps of Europe before and after his reign. He became an Orthodox saint as he oversaw the 5th Ecumenical Council in 533 which laid down church law and founded the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. The coinage was shown with good enlargements of them and a commentary of their iconography.
 
I was fascinated by the story of the Nika Riots in 532 when chariot racing factions, the blue and greens, who combined sport and hooliganism, joined forces against the emperor. Do societies really change?
 
Closes on 19 April 2019

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