5th Century Roman/Germanic Coins! Post Them Here!

What? No love for these interesting coins?

I'm lovin' the "Lion" reverse!!

Still looking through my stuff for 5th century Europe.

I was looking and I have one Arcadius from 408AD, like ACG said, I think I need to fix that. I gonna go looking for some Vandal Kingdom coins!

Well, this could be a very tenuous link Jango but I'll give it a go with the aid of a bit of info from a British perspective.

The last known Roman currency importation into Britain was around 400AD, the true 'Romans' had all but gone at this point, all that remained were Romanised Britains and Anglicised Romans all calling the place home. Cultural people in their own right due to the separation from the rest of the Empire that the English Channel gave them and a strange mix of old and imported cultures. Ahead of them lay uncertain times and what we now call the dark ages. Not an awful lot is known about the next 150 years of British history.

It is clear that some British people migrated to the continent, which resulted in the region of Armorica in northwest Gaul becoming known as Brittany. There is also evidence of British migration to Spain. In Britain towns continued to function, although the military had pulled out, the Romano-British civilian administration remained intact. There would certainly have been shortages brought about by the gradual reduction of trade with Europe, especially in those luxury goods for which the Romano-British elite had developed a taste.

However, trade continued, albeit much curtailed from previous centuries. One of the theories as to why so many barbarous coins are found in Britain is that long after the Romans left the locals continued to copy old Roman coins, then copy the copies etc.

I'm inclined to agree with this theory, it makes sense. Real Roman coinage was no longer getting here but the population trusted Roman looking coins, even though many locals didn't understand Latin they still wanted coins that looked Roman, others may disagree but I feel these 'barbs' were used from the late 3rd Century until the 5th or 6th.

All that being said I can now probably squeeze a possibly 5th century barbarous coin into this thread




On another note I've always wanted a Ricimer:

http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/t...Ricimer.html

Forgot I had this!

These were made between 395-401AD.



Arcadius from Antioch with a nice red/orange patina.

Well, the Beau Street Hoard had a Marc Antony silver coin in it. You also find roman coins modified by Brits and stapled onto rings and things.

I have a Theodosius votive, perhaps listed as scarce! Need to clean up the mint mark, but ill post it later.

Interesting read Bobby!