![]() The discovery is of particular interest for the history of Transylvania and Romania, according to the interim director of the Bruckenthal National Museum, Alexandru Constantin Chituță. But they changed their minds when they saw the UK research. The baron was studying the coin at the time of his death, and the story goes that the last thing he did was write a note that said "genuine."Įxperts at the Brukenthal museum had labeled their coin a historical imitation, as had everyone else. It was part of the inheritance of Baron Samuel von Brukenthal, the Habsburg Governor of Transylvania. Once the researchers determined that the coins were authentic and that they had discovered what they believed to be a lost Roman emperor, they notified researchers at the Brukenthal Museum in Sibin, Transylvania, which also has a Sponsiano coin. He took over management at a time when management was needed." “But what they needed was a supreme military commander in the absence of real authority from Rome. "They may not have known who the real emperor was because there was a civil war," says Professor Pearson. This theory would explain why the coins do not look like those of Rome "In order to create a functioning economy in the province they decided to mint their own coins." "Our interpretation is that he was in charge to maintain control of the military and the civilian population because they were surrounded and completely cut off," he said. and 275 AD, according to Jesper Ericsson. Surrounded by enemies and cut off from Rome, Sponsiano probably assumed supreme command during a period of chaos and civil war, protecting the military and civilian population of Dacia until order was restored and the province evacuated between AD 271. There was a pandemic, civil war, and the empire was fragmenting. Researchers believe he was a military commander who was forced to commit suicide as emperor of the most remote and hard-to-defend province of the Roman empire, called Dacia.Īrchaeological studies have established that Dacia was cut off from the rest of the Roman Empire around 260 AD. Researchers must now answer the question, who was Sponsiano? They examined all four coins under a powerful microscope and confirmed in the journal PLOS 1 that there were indeed scratches and that the patterns were consistent with them being carried in wallets.Ī chemical analysis also showed the coins had been buried in the soil for hundreds of years, according to Jesper Ericsson, who is the museum's curator of coins and collaborated with Professor Pearson on the project. He contacted the Hunterian Museum at the University of Glasgow, where the coin was kept locked in a cabinet along with three others from the original hoard, and asked to work with researchers there. ![]() He could make out scratches on its surface that he thought might have been created by the circulation of the coin. Other experts agreed, and to this day Sponsiano has been dropped from scientific lists.īut Professor Pearson suspected otherwise when he saw photographs of the coin while researching a book on the history of the Roman Empire. He said they were not only "modern" imitations, but poorly made and "ridiculously fantastic". The final blow came in 1863, when Henry Cohen, the leading coin expert of the time at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, addressed the problem for his large catalog of Roman coins. It was considered a genuine Roman coin until the mid-19th century, when experts suspected it might have been produced by forgers of the time due to its crude design. The coin at the center of the story was among a small hoard discovered in 1713. ![]()
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