FORVM`s Classical Numismatics Discussion Board
Numismatic and History Discussion Forums => History and Archeology => Topic started by: Ron C2 on November 23, 2022, 05:36:58 pm
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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/nov/23/coins-study-suggests-fake-emperor-sponsian-was-real-say-scientists (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/nov/23/coins-study-suggests-fake-emperor-sponsian-was-real-say-scientists)
Interesting article and the coins science seems sound. Unsurprisingly, there are skeptics too.
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I'm skeptical ;)
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When one sees a picture of the coin, there is reason to be skeptical.
And the numismatics were !
But the fact, the piece was found in a hoard of genuine coins and the circumstances of place and time the coin must have circulated changed the minds now about this piece.
Let's see if there is a second Sponsian popping up ::).
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There are five Sponsianus coins listed by Eckhel; 2 in the Imperial Museum, Vienna, 1 in the former Museum de France that ended up in Vienna, and 2 others also located in Austria. The Hunter coin was acquired in 1783 from the Hess collection which is the one from Museum de France, the collection of Joseph de France (an official in the court of Maria Theresa).
Regards,
Mauseus
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Hmm
Link to actual paper with better images: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0274285
I believe all known examples originate from the same 1713 find?
The style, motif, and legend are all bizzare. I struggle to identify anything normal looking, maybe the hair?
The researchers concluded the ‘coin’ (they actually say medallion) is cast not struck.
So against the Sponsian piece being genuine we have:
- bizzare style
- Unsual to unique inscription and layout
- Unusual metal composition
- Unusual and significantly divergent weights
- No other examples found
- Cast
- A dude no one has ever heard of, with name so strange it can only be found recorded once in the first century
And for we have:
- Looks scratched up
- Has some old looking deposits
- Forger would have had to use a lot of expensive gold
I think I’m in camp Henry Cohen, who according to the paper concluded “je regarde ces pièces comme des coins modernes ridiculement imaginés, et très-mal faits”
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Indeed !
When I read the article yesterday in The Guardian on screen, I could only see the picture and read the headline. To Continue reading,I had to register, the screen told me.
So, after reading "mauseus" ' message here, I went back to the article via Ron C2's link and now I could read: the 5 Sponsianus gold coins were found together in Transylvania in the 18th century.
Now, for this message, going back via the same said link, to check the exact year of the find, The Guardian tells me I have to register to read the full article :laugh:.
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Also, if cast as the researchers concluded, why would the ancient ‘celator’ cast a double-strike as appears on the reverse of this example?
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Here is the article from "The Guardian".
A hoard of gold coins once thought to be fakes have been authenticated by researchers who say the artefacts reveal a long-lost Roman emperor.
The coins bear the name and image of a shadowy historical figure, Sponsian, whose existence was previously placed in doubt by experts who suggested the coins were the work of sophisticated 18th-century fraudsters.
But a scientific analysis has concluded that the coins are genuine third-century artefacts, and the researchers make the case that Emperor Sponsian was also the real deal.
“We’re very confident that they’re authentic,” said Prof Paul Pearson, of University College London, who led the research. “Our evidence suggests Sponsian ruled Roman Dacia, an isolated goldmining outpost, at a time when the empire was beset by civil wars and the borderlands were overrun by plundering invaders.”
The hoard of coins are said to have been unearthed in Transylvania, in modern-day Romania, in 1713. Several depict recognised Roman emperors of the third century, including Gordian III and Philip the Arab. But four coins bear the name and image of Sponsian, who does not appear in any other historical records.
When the coins were discovered, they were initially thought to be genuine. But from the mid-19th century, attitudes changed owing to the coins’ crude designs and jumbled inscriptions. One expert suggested they were the work of a sophisticated Viennese fraudster who had invented an emperor to appeal to collectors, and this became the prevailing view.
Pearson, an earth scientist, learned about the coins and the “fake emperor” while researching a book on Roman history as a lockdown project. He began corresponding with Jesper Ericsson, the numismatics curator at the Hunterian museum in Glasgow, which holds a coin in its collection, and the pair decided to perform a full scientific analysis.
This revealed that simply based on their weight in gold, the coins are valuable – the assemblage would be worth $20,000 (£16,700) in modern value. “If they’re a forgery, that’s a big outlay to start with,” said Pearson.
When examined at high magnification using optical imaging and electron microscopy, the coins showed similar patterns of wear and tear to genuine coins, suggesting they had been in circulation for several years. Minerals on the surface of the coins were consistent with them having been buried for an extended period, and the scientists detected sulphate crystals, which typically form when an object is deprived of oxygen for a long time and then re-exposed to air.
“I believe we have established with a very high degree of confidence that they are genuine,” said Pearson, adding that the question of Sponsian’s identity was “more speculative”.
It is known that the Dacia region was cut off from central command during a period of military strife in the 260s CE. Writing in the journal Plos One, the authors speculate that Sponsian was a military leader who assumed authority over the Roman enclave and established a local coin mint.
“He took on the title imperator – supreme military commander – that was reserved for the emperor,” said Pearson. “There are other precedents of regional emperors. If we allow Roman emperors to self-identify, he was a Roman emperor.”
Dr Adrastos Omissi, of the University of Glasgow, who was not involved in the research, described the analysis as “a brilliant piece of work”. “I think they’ve made a really convincing argument for the existence of Sponsian and of him being a real emperor,” he said, adding that the late 3rd century was a period of such turbulence and unrest that “the bar for being an emperor was very low”.
However, others were more sceptical. “They’ve gone full fantasy,” said Richard Abdy, the curator of Roman and iron age coins at the British Museum. “It’s circular evidence. They’re saying because of the coin there’s the person, and the person therefore must have made the coin.”
Alex
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It's also interesting to note the coins of Philip I (X2) and the Gordian III also purchased by Hunter at the same time, and from the same find. The Philips look like curious Republican imitations, just as the Sponsian has been described as having a similarity to. The Gordian looks more like a third century imitation
Regards,
Mauseus
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One of the Philip medallions.
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They all have the same "slitty" eyes.
I do not like the look of any of these coins and I think they should all be in the "Fake coin reports", but that is only my personal opinion. Pay me no heed. ;D
Alex
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My personal opinion is that these need to be judged in the light of other grave goods from "barbaricum", particularly the movement of gold from the Roman world for tribute or mercenary payments for example. Those products provide a starting point for local art and we should not get hung up over a new emperor being accepted. The Gordian is obviously based on the Martem Propugnatorem reverse.
There are stylistic links to this fourth century medallion, as an example, Valentinian and Valens, I believe, in Berlin.
I think we are looking at local products from the edge, or beyond the Roman world. Names may or may not reflect a local ruler
Mauseus
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Fake coin report please!
The "Scientific" analysis is not!
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Further reading.
The full paper, not news article, is in the open access journal PLOS below
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0274285 (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0274285)
Regards,
Mauseus
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In the picture of the "Guardian" coin (below), the P of Sponsian looks more like a retrograde C to me. If we are talking about a genuine ancient coin but a barbaric issue with garbled legends then IMP S CONSTAN ... doesn't seem to be beyond the bounds of possibility, even though these issues ostensibly predate the time of the Constantines. Does anyone know their actual date of production (assuming it is before the 18th Century)?
I personally don't believe for one nanosecond that an actual emperor called Sponsian ever existed. I myself own a genuine ancient coin of a non existent emperor. It is a barbaric issue of Tetricus II citing him as Augustus rather than Caesar in the legend. It had me wondering whether it could be evidence of him being elevated to that rank when I first got the coin many years ago but I am a lot less credulous when it comes to barbaric issues now.
Alex
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The other example, showing a different level of wear, from Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu. The P is virtually the same as the P in IMP.
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I think we are looking at local products from the edge, or beyond the Roman world. Names may or may not reflect a local ruler
I'm not an expert in this field, but I also believe that all these coins may be authentic oddities produced in Barbaricum.
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My guess is as others have said, it is a barbaric issue. The celator made up a name or maybe even used his own name and minted a handful of coins. So yes, it is ancient. It was passed off as a real aureus, it circulated perhaps for decades and then was buried, but it is still not an official mint product or even a real person.
EDITED
And why the radiate crown on an aureus?
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Hi Jay
And why the radiate crown on an aureus?
In the third century there were radiate gold pieces, referred to these days as binio.
Cheers,
Mauseus
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Ah, well not my area of interest. Learned something new. Thanks
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One of fellow board members has fairly demolished the argument from a numismatic perspective on Twitter.
I won't repeat the negatives in detail, but you can start by asking why a nearly 400 year old , from not a massive issue, silver reverse type that doesn't even mention Rome or have regional meaning, would be known and meaningful to the supposed issuer and his supposed troops receiving gold. Particularly since another 100 years of perfectly good silver and gold, often in massive quantities, was presumably in competition for the reverse type even assuming the Republic had more credibility than the even more massive quantities of equally good Julio-Claudian gold and silver that said "IMP" and "AVG"
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That is the most problematic part but the author does address that issue—he doesn’t just leave it unexplained.
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In my view, the author does not address the Republican reverse as an "issue", but rather folds it into the argument in support.
Apart from many other numismatic objections, it is a very serious weakness in the political messaging of coinage, akin to saying that a person running for governor in a U.S. state in the Rocky Mountains in 2022 decided to make a campaign ad featuring the explorer Henry Hudson's ship Half-Moon, even if no one in government had likely ever mentioned Henry Hudson's name more than a few times and certainly hadn't named a river or town or put his ship on a coin (which happened with Hudson far more often than Minucius Augurinus! ). Yet that same energetic governor to-be ignored every iconic person and well-known image appearing on a coin in North America from James I to GHW Bush. An episode of Star Trek also comes to mind.
In the absence of historical references, and the known existence of fantasy imitations manufactured around the time of the purported discovery, the argument is quite a stretch.
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I thought he did cite Republican imitations from this time period and also an excerpt from Tacitus that said something to the effect of Republican coinage being valued in the remote areas of the empire?
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I'm not ready to speculate how these came to be, but the science proving the coin itself is ancient seems decent. I'm leaning towards barbaric imitation coin.
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The researchers have unquestionably done a lot of hard work, and as an amateur collector I am in a weak position to comment. But for those thinking authentic barbarous imitation, could you point me in the direction of a (reputable) auction listing for a western gold imitation of any Roman type dating anywhere from the 1st to 5th century that is cast? I can find one or two (https://sixbid-coin-archive.com/#/en/single/l31078943?text=Cast%20binio), yet this 1713 hoard contained multiple cast types ranging from a Plautius Plancus to Gordian. I find the lack of contemporary cast coins highly suspicious. It could be, as the paper concludes, “…a unique category of ancient coin: heavy cast gold medallions of highly anomalous design that are neither ‘barbarous’ nor counterfeit.” Or it could simply be a cast forgery.
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Anokhin lists 288 imitative gold coins here:
Анохин О. В. Фальшивомонетчество у варварских племён на территории современной Украины и Молдовы. Каталог варварских подражаний. — Днепропетровск: Середняк Т. К., 2015, — 206 с.
Available in academia.edu
Pekka K
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Thank you Pekka, great resource! A very comprehensive grouping. Unfortunately I can’t translate the Cyrillic in the PDF (I’m getting emojis).
Based on the photos of the 288 gold examples, I gather while the majority are struck or fourrée/plated, some do look cast. Interestingly, coins above 7 grams are very few - I don’t see any at 8 (although weight is not recorded for all examples).
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After download Google translator works:
Counterfeiting among the barbarian tribes in the territory
modern Ukraine and Moldova. Catalog of barbaric imitations. —
Dnepropetrovsk: Serednyak T.K., 2015, - 206 p.
Pekka K
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Here is a short video news story on the BBC about this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B0s4lyAqDY&ab_channel=BBCNews
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A nice corpus of barbarous types, which someone posted on another forum:
http://barbarous-imitations.narod.ru/index/podrazhanija_zolotym_monetam/0-87
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I seem to remember that Saturninus coinage were originally declared a fraud, or ancient imitation as well, then turned out to be a genuine usurper.. That with only 2 known specimens.
So let's not be so quick. My main question, is why can't his coins be genuine? So what, no one heard of him.. He may have only lasted a week or so from a small area in Dacia. Possibly killed by local troops or public officials or locals.. Just long enough to mint a few coins and when the locals realized he had no hope, or they were loyal, he got himself killed. I am sure there are a LOT of people who tried to become emperor that no one today remembers or history lost their name....
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I have been reading this with interest. I have no basis, but my gut feel is what Tacitus said. This guy may have declared himself emperor from a small region and lasted a week and the powers that were in other parts of the empire never even knew about him or found out that there had been a rebellious commander in a province later. Who knows, but it is certainly not out of the realm of possibility and he wouldn't have been the only one.
Virgil
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I think it's equally possible the coin was minted after 275 when the Romans withdrew from Dacia, but the local romanized Carpi tribes tried to keep semblance of Roman order for a few decades before the goths put and end to all that.
But again, it's all just speculation and underlines that all the researched showed is the coin has wear on it (either from circulation or by other means), and that it was buried for a long time, long enough to leave chemically detectable surface evidence, exact duration TBD.
The rest is just scholarly fancy.
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It’s fantastic to read the opinion of so many experts here. I’m not one of them, but my own researchs taught me that this coin has NOT been struck between December 10-19 1582 AD.
DT
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It’s fantastic to read the opinion of so many experts here. I’m not one of them, but my own researchs taught me that this coin has NOT been struck between December 10-19 1582 AD.
DT
It wasn't minted December 6-9, 1582 either! I was there!
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I wonder how many unsurpers there were, that we have never heard of... In a time when it takes weeks to go across the whole of the empire, there may have been hundreds over the years... It would not surprise me to find badly minted coins of these guys....
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Has anyone seen a coin of Gaius Nymphidius Sabinus?