On the question of the routes and ways by which Byzantine coins entered the territory of Kyivan Rus’

This article reconstructs the channels and mechanisms through which Byzantine coins spread to regions outside the empire, particularly the neighboring Kyivan Rus’ polity (9th – early 13th centuries). Three principal modes of transmission can be identified. The first is the sphere of economic and commercial exchange. The second is allied agreements, whether in the form of remuneration for military assistance or diplomatic largesse, expressed through gifts from the Byzantine emperors to the princes of Rus’. The third is the agency of mercenaries, both Rus’ and Scandinavian, in imperial service. The role of Christian pilgrimage in disseminating coinage remains a subject for further inquiry. The primary artery of monetary movement was the so-called “Route from the Varangians to the Greeks” (9th – early 13th century), whose eastern segment connected Constantinople and other Byzantine territories in the south with Scandinavia in the north. The greatest concentrations of Byzantine coins have been unearthed at Kyiv and Gnezdovo, nodal centers along this route. The eastern segment of the Varangian-Greek route, so vividly described by Constantine Porphyrogenitus in his “De Administrando Imperio” had Constantinople and Amastris as the two principal emporia at which the Rus’ congregated for trade. The article offers also a thorough analysis of the legal codification of diplomatic and commercial relations between the Rus’ and the Byzantines in the treaties of 907, 911, 944, and 971. The treaties also specify financial penalties for criminal offenses, as well as ransoms for prisoners of war: payments made in “zlatniki” by both the Rus’ and the Byzantines. The transmission of coinage through diplomatic gifts and subsidies for military aid can be traced in the tributes given to princes Oleg, Igor, Olga, and Sviatoslav. There is also ample evidence of the payment of Rus’ (“Οἱ Ῥῶς”, also styled “Ταυροσκύθες”) and Scandinavian (“Βάραγγοι”) mercenaries in Byzantine service, whether as wages, festive distributions, or spoils of war.