| During the 5th century, Byzantine coinage acquires a more overtly Christian character, especially during the reign of Theodosius II (408–50), who was much influenced by his pious sister Pulcheria and his wife Eudocia.
In the Western Empire, a cross or a Christogram was placed on the reverse of the tremissis in ca. 426 (photos below). Contemporaneously in the East, from 420/21 onward, the Victory (in profile) holds a conspicuously tall cross instead of a staff (photo right and see Case III, No. 21). A century later, under Justin I, the female Victory is transformed into the male figure of the archangel Michael, "the archistrategos (general) of heavenly armies." The archangel, represented frontally, holds a tall cross in his right hand and, in his left, the globus cruciger, the orb topped by a cross symbolizing divinely-held authority (photo lower right and see Case III, No. 22).
 
Two Tremisses of Galla Placidia.
Reverses.
A Chi-Rho and a Cross, each with a Wreath
Ravenna (or Rome?), 426-30
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