THE MINTS
Historical record of the places at which the coins were struck is entirely wanting, and the evidence of hoards is not clear, for, with one exception, they have not been found to contain any great preponderance of pieces from a mint which could be identified with the locality in which they were discovered. It becomes clear, however, on examining the coins themselves, that they were issued from at least three, and possibly four, different mint cities. The fabric and style of most of them differ materially from contemporary Continental issues, and it is well established that these came from the British mints.
One mint was undoubtedly established in London; its distinguishing mark, the letter L, is found on a large number of coins. Many other coins bear one or other of the mint-marks C or CC. Some authors have also noted the mark CL, but the present writer has failed to verify it. Stukeley, pl. xxix. 2, publishes a coin on which he reads the exergual mark as CLA, but this also it has not proved possible to verify. Some authors have attributed these marks to Clausentum, Bitteme, near Southampton, but modem opinion favours the claim of Camulodunum, Colchester, and is probably correct in so doing.5
As we have already seen, the greater part of the silver coinage of Carausius bears the exergual mark RSR, which is also found on some twenty-four varieties of his bronze. These bronze pieces resemble in workmanship, and are generally of similar type and size to the silver coins bearing the same mint-mark, and it might be supposed that they were struck from the silver dies, but for the fact that in most cases they bear a radiate bust. They are decidedly scarce, only one specimen of each variety having been noted.
Controversy has raged round the interpretation of the letters R.S.R. and the mint to which they should be attributed.
As the exergual mark used in the mints of Carausius almost always includes the letter or letters indicating the place of issue, we are at first sight inclined to attach a similar meaning to the letters in question. Slight varieties of the middle letter occur, and it would, therefore, appear that the name of the place of mintage, if indicated at all, commences with the letter R.
The possibility that Rotomagus, Rouen, indicated is excluded by the fact that all the coins, except perhaps the two denarii referred to on p. 31 above, are of British fabric, and it therefore becomes necessary, in pursuing the above assumption, to inquire what. British town was in name, situation, and importance a likely seat for the mint. Most numismatists from Stukeley onwards have selected Rutupiae, Richborough, on the Kentish coast, near Sandwich. The Itinerary of Antoninus mentions this port as being 450 stadia, about 53 miles, from Gesoriacum, Boulogne, which statement is very accurate, and Ammianus Marcellinus6 speaks of a traveler from Paris to London, who, leaving Boulogne with a fair wind, reached Rutupiae on the opposite coast.
The harbour was a good one, and convenient both for the Gallic and the Batavian trade, and the town was important and populous in Roman times, and so remained till its destruction by the Danes in 1010. The remains of the Roman building known. as Richborough Castle and traces of an arena still bear testimony to its bygone importance, and large numbers of Roman coins have been found there; Roach Smith records no less than 1279, of which 91 were of Carausius and 43 of Allectus. Rutupiae, therefore, seems to fulfill the conditions laid down.
The only possible competitor for the honour seems to be Regnum, Chichester, which, though an ancient Roman settlement, does not appear to have been a place of much importance till Saxon times, and has produced no relics on which a claim to supplant Rutupiae could be based.
But the acceptance of Rutupiae as the place of mintage does not by any means clear up the whole difficulty, for it leaves the second R and the letter S still unexplained. Dr. Stukeley reads, "Rutupii Signator Rogatorum. Signator is the cutter of the die. Roga donativum honorarium. Rogator is the same word as Erogator: the distributor of the Emperor's bounty and presents to the officers and soldiery."
Akerman shirks the difficulty of. the second R, and interprets the mark "Rutupiae signata." Other modern writers have suggested "Rutupiae Statio," or " Stativa Romana," but no convincing suggestion has been put forward.
Seeing that we have to deal with an altogether exceptional issue, the first output of silver for seventy years, we are perhaps justified in considering whether its exergual letters may not also be exceptional, and have reference to something other than the matters generally indicated by mint-marks. The required initial letters appear in an inscription quoted by Orelli, "Rationalis Sacrarum Remunerationum," but it is difficult to base any satisfactory interpretation thereon. There was, however, during the Imperial era, in each Roman province an official of high standing, "qui res fisci curabat publicos reditus colligebat et erogabat;" in fact, a provincial chancellor of the exchequer, with a control over receipts and payments which was independent of the governor. He was at first called Curator, or Procurator Caesaris, but from the time of the fiscal reform under Severus until the middle of the fourth century, he was entitled Rationalis Summarum Rationum.7 It is possible that this special issue was made by the officer who held this title, not of course independently of, but under the authority of Carausius, and that the letters are the initials of that title, especially as Boethius tells us that Hirtius, a Procurator Caesaris, was slain at York. This theory is not inconsistent with the fact that none of these coins bear anything which can be identified as an office mark, and it is consistent with the attribution of them to London made by Count de Salis. That distinguished numismatist devoted great attention to the identification of the mints of the third and fourth centuries, especially by means of the peculiarities of style and fabric which distinguished them, and it is only necessary to examine the coins of this period in the National Collection, which were arranged by him, to be convinced of the accuracy of his knowledge and the hesitation with which dissent from his conclusions must be expressed.
The mark RSR is not found on any coins except those of Carausius, and perhaps no other Emperor for many years had been so original and individual in his treatment of the coinage, and therefore so likely to diverge from the usual practices. As mentioned above, this mark appears on two gold coins, and London was certainly the principal, if not the only, British mint which struck gold. There is no material difference in style and fabric between the silver pieces marked L and ML and those marked RSR, and therefore nothing in the coins themselves which tends to negative their attribution to London.
We have seen that the coins which Carausius overstruck on those of earlier Emperors were probably issued from London, and it is therefore suggestive to find one such piece in the Fitzwilliam Museum of the type FELICITAS, galley to right, which, from its reverse being incompletely struck on an older obverse, has a reverse legend reading PF AVG...ITAS, and bears the mark R.S.R. in the exergue. On the whole, therefore, whether the suggestion as to the meaning of the letters which is tentatively made above be accepted or not, there seems considerable ground for holding, with de Salis, that the mark is a London one.
The other principal mint of Carausius was situated on the Continent, and, as we have seen, probably at Rouen. Messrs. Rollin and Feuardent, in their old catalogue, point out that the pieces issued from it resemble the Gallic coins of Tetricus, and are easily distinguishable from the British-struck pieces, by reason of the difference in the inscriptions, in which the letters are imperfectly formed, and even more by the difference in the portrait. An examination of the coins will at once convince the observer of the correctness of this; the portrait maigre et etroit is totally unlike the burly masterful Briton, the metal differs in colour, being of a brighter brown, and the lettering is unlike that of any British mint. The old catalogue proceeds to attribute the mint to Boulogne, but its authors apparently did so without noticing the few pieces which actually bear the exergual mint-mark R, and are of the same fabric as the unmarked specimens. This mark, coupled with the facts that the Rouen find above referred to consisted entirely of coins of the mint in question, and that others are found in Northern France but are very scarce in English finds, seems to render it reasonably certain that the mint actually operated in Rouen. The scarceness of its pieces and the few distinct varieties of its types, suggest that it operated for a short time only, while the poorness of the execution and the numerous blunders and slight variations which are found, suggest that it was hurriedly established, and did the best it could with somewhat makeshift artificers. This mint did not operate at all in the reign of Allectus, and probably ceased about the time of the fall of Boulogne.
There are a very few Continental pieces which do not appear to be of Rouen fabric, but there is no means of ascertaining where they were struck. The most interesting of these is in the Royal Mint Collection, and is figured on p. 57 (see Fig. 2). A few bronze coins also exist which may, like the silver coins mentioned above, be Continental imitations of British pieces, and are difficult to attribute.
A number of British coins are so barbaric in their workmanship as to suggest that they were contemporary forgeries or the earliest issues of the London mint. In favour of the latter view is the fact that they are found in somewhat considerable numbers in what were evidently hoards of approved currency, such as that of Blackmoor, and therefore appear to have been officially recognized. A. very few of them bear a London mint-mark, but none have been noticed which can certainly be attributed to Colchester. In fact, though Colchester, like London, issued coins which do not bear the mint-letter, and its pieces are not all of equal merit, it seems never to have issued any which are of quite as rough execution as the worst London specimens, no doubt because it was not established until the affairs of the country were brought into order and skilled workmen could be provided.
The large number of coins of Carausius which bear no mint letter present some difficulty in classification, but seeing that the letters B and F are hardly ever found coupled with the mint-letter C, but very frequently with the letter L, it is possible to attribute coins with the former letters in the field and without mint-letter to London, while for the converse reason coins marked SC only are probably from Colchester. Coins marked SP without exergual letter appear to be most frequently from Colchester, while an examination of the unmarked pieces of British fabric shows that a few of them may be given to Colchester, but that the great majority are from the London mint or its barbaric imitators.
5. Cf. Num. Chron., 1906, p. 184.
6. Bk. XX. chap. i.
7. Bouche Leclercq, Manual des institutions Romaines, p. 353.
Webb, P.H. The reign and coinage of Carausius. (London, 1908).
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