Roman Britain's Pirate King by Simon Elliott;

Author:Simon Elliott;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / Ancient
Publisher: Casemate Publishers & Book Distributors, LLC
Published: 2022-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

It is unclear where the ‘barbarous radiates’ detailed here were struck, though unofficial mints in London and Richborough are candidates. Certainly radiates and other coins, official or not, played a major role in the usurpation of Carausius and Allectus, as detailed later. Indeed it was Carausius who established Roman Britain’s first official mint in London, which survived his usurpation and was still striking low-denomination coins in the AD 320s (and was briefly revived in the AD 380s by Magnus Maximus to mint gold and silver issues). However, we do know that the circulation of radiates diminished with the advent of the Diocletianic Reformation, with the new emperor introducing his new system of coinage between AD 294 and AD 296. Here, the eastern augustus standardized the gold content in the aureus, introduced a new high-quality silver coin called the argentus, and another silver-washed coin called the nummus which contained 5 per cent silver. From that point on the use of the radiate image on official coins fell out of use, except for a short time on smaller-denomination coins known today as ‘post-reform radiates’. Constantine I then introduced a new gold coin called the solidus and a new silver coin called the siliqua that, together, remained the principal precious metal coins in circulation through to the end of the empire in the west. The latter were very common in late Roman Britain and are often found in the archaeological record, clipped to allow their silver content to be recycled.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.