SPONSIANVS. -- Who this person was cannot be correctly assertained, as historians are totally silent respecting him. It is supposed that he usurped the title of Augustus in Dacia, or some adjoining region of the empire, about the same time as the equally unknow Iotapianus, and the no less obscure Pacatianus, assumed the purple -- viz., probably during the reign of Philip senior and junior; certainly after Gordianus |Pius|; because the following gold medallion is of the same workmanship, and seems to have had the same origin as the barbaric medallions, described by Mionnet (vol. i. 394 and 404). Eckhel enumerates two medallions in the Vienna Museum, and two in other Austrian cabinets.
IMP. SPONSIANI. Radiated head to the right.
Rev. -- CAVG. A column surmounted by a statue, which has a spear in his right hand; on one side of the column is a man clothed in the toga, holding something which cannot be defined; on the other side of the column in an augur bearing the lituus; and at the foot of the column are two ears of corn. -- See Akerman, vol. i. p. 493, pl. viii. N° 7.