Nice recap, Ben, and some valid points of consideration. Seems different sections of the divided Empire
had some independence and divination in coin
types.
I just read this paper by David
Woods on the period of Constantine the Greats death and it is worth reading over for those among us collecting this period
Numismatic Evidence and the Succession to
Constantine IDavid
WoodsNumismatic Chronicle 171 (2011)
https://www.academia.edu/7070181/Numismatic_Evidence_and_the_Succession_to_Constantine_I?email_work_card=titleONTROVERSY
surrounds the sequence of events between the death of Constantine Inear
Nicomedia on 22 May 337 and the promotion of
his three surviving sons –
Constantine II,
Constantius II, and
Constans - from the rank of
Caesar to Augustusin
Pannonia on 9 September following.
The primary problems concern the dateof the massacre of most of their male relatives within the wider Constantinianfamily, including Dalmatius their cousin and fellow
Caesar, together with
his chiefsupporters, and the establishment of responsibility for this event. Unfortunately, theearliest surviving literary sources allude only
eetingly to the events of this crucial period and their authors clearly felt inhibited by the continued reign of one of the biggest benefactors of the events of that summer,
Constantius II, from treating themas fully and frankly as they might otherwise have done. On the other hand, laterauthors are usually prejudiced against
Constantius II at least, if not
his father and brothers also, chie
y on account of their religious policies, so that their accounts arenot necessarily as reliable as they may at
rst seem, even when they do not actuallycontradict one another, which they often do. Hence there is a need to look beyondthe literary sources and to extract the maximum information possible from the onlyexactly
contemporary evidence that we have for the events of 337, the coinage.Burgess seeks to do precisely this in a recent paper where he reconstructs the eventsof the summer in detail, relying chie
y on a careful analysis of the coin data.
The purose of this note, however, is to highlight the hidden assumptions underlying hissubsequent interpretation of the results of
his analysis of the coin data, the fact thatthe evidence does not always prove what he claims it to prove, and to suggest analternative interpretation of the analysis where possible
He questions the conclusions of the write up by Burgess in
his paper The Summer Of Blood
Very interesting...a lot we can only surmise