Roman Coins Once Thought to Be Fake Reveal a Long Lost Historical Figure:
Long dismissed as forgeries, a handful of ancient Roman coins uncovered in Transylvania more than three centuries ago have been authenticated by a new analysis.
It’s not hard to see why the coins – dated to the 260s CE – might have been considered fakes. Where most ancient coinage displays the head of an emperor, one of the artifacts displays a mysterious figure not portrayed in any other known record.
On some the name “Sponsian” is stamped, a figure of Roman authority history seems to have forgotten.
* * * * “These observations force a re-evaluation of Sponsian as a historical personage,” Pearson and team write. “We suggest he was most likely an army commander in the isolated Roman Province of Dacia during the military crisis of the 260s CE.”
So while he may not have ruled over the entirety of Rome, Sponsian appears to have fashioned his own little empire in a remote gold mining outpost, complete with a crudely minted currency using metals from local mines, probably after the Roman Empire had started to become fractured, the researchers suspect.
“We suggest that Dacia became cut off from the imperial center around 260 [CE] and effectively seceded under its own military regime, which initially coined precious metal bullion using old Republican-era designs, then using the names of the most recent previous emperors who had achieved some success in the area, and finally under the name of a local commander-in-chief,” the team explain.
Of course, they’re gold coins, so I would never have been able to afford them. And my status as a coin collector is so fresh that I do not have a place to put the four coins I own, so they’re awaiting inclusion in a Five Things on My Desk post as we speak.
(Link via Instapundit.)
