http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE3-f5Dpi0c&feature=share AT 38 MINUTES AND 6 SECONDS YOU CAN SEE THE ISSUE FROM ERCAVICASome of the later
Caligula Spanish issues are remarkably similiar
Julio Claudian personages from
Caesaraugusta, but lets focus on the 3 sisters issue. It was found in 1992 in
Ercavica modern day Cuenca in excavations.
RPC SUPPLEMENT I 467a. See Page 178-
Coinage and identity in the Roman Provinces
edited by Christopher J. Howgego, Volkert Heuchert, Andrew M. BurnettVery interesting.
An analogous tendency can be observed in the designs used on the coinage. These not infrequently copy
Roman coins, and some of the latest issues under
Caligula are quite astonishingly similar. For example at
Rome one finds coins made with the
portraits of the emperor, of
Divus Augustus, of the emperor's father and mother,
Germanicus and
Agrippina the Elder, and for
his grandfather
Agrippa. Coins were minted at Zaragoza (ancient
Caesaraugusta) for all the same five imperial personages; not only that, but most of the coins are close copies of the
Roman issues. A second example of the same phenomenon
comes from a fairly recent discovery, a coin minted at
Ercavica (modern Cuenca), and found in excavations at the city in 1992. It is an extraordinarily close copy of the similar coin minted at
Rome depicting
Caligula and
his three sisters.
So the western coinage shows a tendency to look like
Roman coinage, and communities preferred to use coinage that looked like
Roman coinage. It was not a big step for the western cities and communities to stop making their own and just to use
Roman coinage, which was already circulating in the
area. In fact they used both centrally produced coinage ‘of
Roman style, minted in
Lugdunum =
Lyon, and locally made imitation coins which, significantly, also copied centrally produced coins rather than the earlier local mintages.
http://www.investmentsoffice.com/io/Investment_Thoughts/Markets_in_History/The_Roman_Denarius_and_Euro_A_Precedent_for_Monetary_Union.php
