Athens as equivalent to 28 Attic drachms, at Panticapæum as equivalent to 22 Attic drachms, and in Persia as equivalent to 25 Attic or 20 Persian drachms. These various values agree well with the circumstances of each place cited at Athens silver was common and gold rare; at Panticapæum gold was common and silver rare; while in Persia neither metal was scarce. The variety seems enormous to a modern; but we must remember that in ancient days the transport of precious metal was a matter of great risk and difficulty. At Cyzicus the electrum staters would pass for 7 of the silver staters of the city. PERCY GARDNER.

Æ

VIII.

ON A COIN OF A SECOND CARAUSIUS, CÆSAR IN BRITAIN IN THE FIFTH CENTURY.

THE remarkable bronze coin of which the engraving appears above happened to strike my observation amongst a lot of Roman and Romano-barbarous coins found at Richborough, the famous Portus Rutupis or Rutupiæ of the ancients. The obverse presents a head modelled in a somewhat barbarous fashion on that of a fourth-century Emperor, diademed and with the bust draped in the paludamentum. The legend, reading outwards, is: DOMINO CARAV2IO CE2 (the AR, V2I, and E2 in ligature).

The reverse presents a familiar bronze type of Constans or Constantius II. The Emperor holding phoenix and labarum standard stands at the prow of a vessel, the rudder of which is held by Victory. In the present case, however, in place of the usual legend that accompanies this reverse-FEL. TEMP. REPARATIO-appears the strange and unparalleled inscription

1 The Emperor's legs are omitted, as also a part of the forepart of the vessel, as if to make room for the inscription, NO.

The last three letters of CONTA . are in contiguity, followed by uncertain traces of another, and the NO is placed over the fore part of the vessel; in the field to the left are apparently three pellets. The exergual inscription is invisible. The coin bears traces of having been washed with white metal, and it weighs 421 grs.

It will be seen at once that, though both in its obverse and reverse designs approaching known fourth-century types, the present piece is not a mere barbarous imitation. of a coin of Constans or Constantius II. It presents us, on the contrary, with a definite and wholly original legend of its own. The name of the Cæsar represented is clearly given as Carausius, but the whole character of the design and the reverse type, which only makes its appearance on the imperial dies towards the middle of the fourth century, absolutely prohibit us from attributing it to the wellknown usurper who reigned from 287 to 293, and who, moreover, always claimed the title of Augustus.

The present official style is wholly unexampled on a Roman coin. D. N for DOMINVS NOSTER becomes of course usual on coins from Constantine's time onwards, and DOMINOR. NOSTROR. CAESS is also frequent, but the title DOMINO, standing alone without qualifying pronoun, as it appears on this coin, is as exceptional a phenomenon as the legend on the remarkable piece of an earlier date, in which the titles DEO ET DOMINO are coupled with the name of Aurelian.2

The CONTA. . of the reverse is enigmatic. The Romano-British tendency, of which other examples will be given, to omit unaccented i's in certain positions, would make COMT.. (which, owing to the ligature of the N and

2 DEO ET DOMINO NATO AVRELIANO AVG.

T, is a possible version of the legend) a thoroughly legitimate abbreviation for COMIT. . in the same way as on a Roman inscription found in Britain we find MILTum for MILITum. But a numismatic reference to a COMES AVGVSTI other than a god does not exist, and we can hardly venture to look for it even on so exceptional a piece as the present. I will leave it, therefore, for others to detect upon our coin the sentinel form of a Comes Littoris Saxonici looking forth from the prow of his galley in expectation of the Saxon pirate, and will content myself with the suggestion that either an S has been carelessly omitted, in which case CONTA.. stands for CONSTA, or that the X-like crossing of the second and third stroke of the N indicates the presence of an X. According to the analogy of late Romano-British inscriptions, an X may stand for an S, and we should have here CONXTA . . = CONSTA, as on a Romano-British monument we find CELEXTI for CELESTI. The effaced traces of letters which follow I venture to read NTI in ligature, and if the NO above the prow of the vessel, which evidently forms the continuation of the legend, be joined on to the rest, we get the form CONXTA[NTIJNO for CONSTANTINO.

The prototype of the reverse design of our coin, representing the Emperor standing on the prow of a galley steered by Victory, and holding the phoenix and labarum standard, is one of the commonest of the fourth-century imperial types, and its date can be fixed within certain limits. The issue of the class of coins to which it belongs is conterminous with the last period of the reign of the

3 Inscriptiones Britannia Christiana, 128. Similarly on African inscriptions, MILEX for MILES, XANC'(tissimo) for SANC(tissimo), on Italian XANTISSIMVS, &c.

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Emperor Constans, and the contemporary portion of that of Constantius II. It is not found on the coins of Constantine the younger, who met his death in 340 a.d. On the other hand, at the moment of Constans' murder, and the consequent accession of Magnentius in 350, it seems to have been already superseded by the allied type on which the phoenix is replaced by a globe and Victory. On the coins of Magnentius, as on those of Constantius Gallus, who was associated by Constantius II. in 351, only this later variety appears.

We are thus enabled to establish a terminus a quo in two directions for the period during which the class of coins that supplies the prototype of the present piece was issued from the imperial mints. Its emission cannot well have been earlier than 340 or later than 350 A.D. But there seem to me to be sufficient grounds for fixing the date of this type within still narrower limits. Evidently it records a maritime expedition; and in the case of the Emperor Constans this maritime expedition is not far to seek. In other words, it must refer to Constans' passage to Britain in 343 in answer to the appeal of the hardpressed Provincials-one of the most important episodes in his reign, as may be gathered from the reference to it in the later books of Ammianus Marcellinus; though, alas! a full account of it, recorded in an earlier book of the same author, together with his notice of British geography, has perished. The connexion of the present type with this British expedition is rendered still more probable by its close analogy with a more elaborate composition on a contorniate medal of the same Emperor, which was certainly commemorative of that event. On

Lib. xx. 1. 1; xxvii. 8, 4.