
An obscure Roman warlord (who may, or may not, have prospered briefly in the stricken trans-Danubian province of Dacia, c.260 AD) is causing uproar in the tranquil groves of academe. You couldn’t make it up, could you?
Professor Paul Pearson, a UCL earth scientist with antiquarian interests, stoutly maintains he really did exist, and he’s got new and irrefutable scientific evidence to prove it. This evidence comprises minute examination of surface abrasion and soil deposits on a single gold coin bearing the name and Roman imperial likeness of one “Sponsian” . The coin resides in Glasgow’s Hunterian Museum, where Pearson has recruited a knowledgeable ally in the numismatics curator, Jesper Ericsson.
It’s worth pointing out that there is no corroborative evidence – literary, archaeological or epigraphic, excepting three other (unexamined) coins bearing his name – to suggest would-be emperor Sponsian ever existed. Either you believe the coins, or you cannot (like fairies at the bottom of the garden) believe in Sponsian himself.
Dr Richard Abdy, curator of Roman and Iron Age Coins at the British Museum, has chosen not to, and gone very public with his doubts. Professor Pearson, he alleges, has fallen victim to a schoolboy logical fallacy: because the gold coin bears the name of Sponsian, therefore he exists; because he exists, therefore the coin must be genuine, and not the enigmatic forgery that many an eminent authority had pronounced it since being unearthed in early 18th century Transylvania (aka: the western portion of Roman Dacia).
Unsurprisingly, Professor Pearson has not taken this assault on his reputation lying down. He disses Abdy for his irreverent critique and, by way of analogy, points out (reasonably enough) that it was hieroglyphic analysis which established the identity of an otherwise unknown pharoah, Tutankhamun, well before the discovery of the entombed body itself.
Opining on this Olympian spat between minor academic deities is the Junoesque and omnipresent Mary Beard. Professor Beard acknowledges the scientific rigour of Pearson’s coin analysis while retaining Reservations.

The abrasions on the coin, she says, do indeed indicate a provenance in antiquity rather than 18th century Vienna – hub not only of the Habsburg empire (which then ruled Transylvania), but a thriving trade in fraudulent antiquities designed to unburden careless connoisseurs of their wealth. And yet, and yet… the gold coin, and others from its hoard, are cast from moulds rather than being struck with a die. That’s very unRoman, but very 18th century forger. Then there’s the matter of the barbarous, illiterate, legends (describing the emperor and his various offices) around the edge of the coins. They’re a bit suspicious too.
So, what should we conclude from this storm in a teacup? Here’s my take for what it’s worth (which may not be very much, admittedly).
The media debate has been over-siloed, probably to make a highly recondite matter more easily accessible. It would benefit from widening its frame of reference.
Take a closer look at the other Hunterian Sponsian-related coins that appear in Pearson’s carefully argued PLOS document. Among them is a very large gold coin, of similar grade to the smaller Sponsian coin to its right, and almost certainly created from the same bullion.
The first, pragmatic, point is that the gold they are both minted in is of high quality (about 95% purity). Indeed, the four gold coins in the Sponsian “assemblage” have a collective intrinsic value of about $20,000 in today’s money. Which 18th forger in his right mind would be tempted to make such a colossal upfront investment in his raw material?
Add to this that the gold has small impurities in it (principally silver), consistent with it being extracted in a very specific part of the Roman province of Dacia, which was famed for its gold mines.
Moving on from provenance, what about period? Here Pearson’s analysis comes into its own. The wear patterns and soil deposits on the coins are consistent with burial in antiquity; they are not the sort of thing that could have been faked in an 18th century Viennese back-street.
Now let’s turn to some stylistic features of the two, related, coins. The larger is, self-evidently from its appearance, a poor-grade copy of a genuine Roman coin – a binio or double aureus of the Emperor Gordian III (238-244 AD).


The original would have been struck in Rome, which in the mid-third century AD was still (just about) able to exercise a jealous monopoly over the standardisation, production and distribution of all gold coinage. The binio was the highest denomination then in circulation. Though not exactly a commemorative medallion (in that it was formally integrated into the Roman monetary system, being worth about 50 silver denarii) it was exceedingly rare and would have been out of reach of any but the wealthiest Roman citizens – landowners of the senatorial class, members of the imperial family etc. And of one other elite, without whose support the Roman imperial state would long since have collapsed: the army.
“Enrich the soldiers, forget everyone else,” was the cynical death-bed advice of the masterful emperor Septimius Severus to his elder son in 211. Wiser words than he could have known, half a century later – as the Roman Empire spiralled into a morass of civil war, military anarchy, barbarian incursions, Persian invasions, a plague pandemic, civic decay, economic collapse, hyperinflation and hyperinflation’s concomitant – the disintegration of the Roman monetary system. Silver coinage, with which legionaries were commonly paid, was debased beyond recognition until it was no more than a silver wash on a worthless billon base; smaller-change bronze coinage meanwhile had been driven out of circulation. Gold coinage, in these circumstances, became the go-to reserve around which a post-monetary improvised barter economy could pivot.
The soldiers were the emperor’s “frenemy”: his bulwark, but also his assured downfall if he failed to pay them promptly; what the army could make, it could also break and it did, frequently: the average lifespan of a Roman emperor between 238 and 284 AD was 3 or 4 years. When the central power, that is the emperor in Rome, became incapable of guaranteeing the security of the empire’s borders – increasingly the case after 251 AD – local commanders began to fill the vacuum. Sometimes this was out of necessity – an emergency thrust upon them; sometimes out of ambition: they themselves wished to “assume the purple” and challenge the legitimacy of the central power. In either case, their cause was greatly assisted by the proximity of a large garrison of frontier legions – usually on the Rhine or Danube – whose loyalty could only be assured by a ready supply of gold (and when that ran out, plunder).
All this may seem a long digression from the binio of Gordian III, but it isn’t really. Roman Dacia was a relatively wealthy and civically advanced province, which had a garrison of at least two legions. Yet its security was precarious, lying exposed as it did to the north of the River Danube – the natural, defensible, border of the empire.
This scarcely mattered during the prosperous epoch of 2nd century empire. By 260 AD the geo-political situation was markedly different. The central power in Rome, already on the backfoot from fighting exhausting wars on two fronts – a Persian invasion in Syria and repeated barbarian incursions across the Rhine and Danube – now faced a series of internal rebellions from sections of the empire itself, such as Gaul and Britain. These secessions further depleted the central power’s ability to counter emergencies on its borders. Increasingly, the emperor in Rome lacked the men and, because of a reduced imperial tax-base, the money to deal with anything other than the most existential of threats.
Dacia, assailed by waves of marauding Goths and Carpi, was not one of these. It was left to fend for itself as best it could. After 260, a veil of darkness falls upon the province. From now on, there is little coinage and less epigraphy to be found commemorating the contemporary emperor in Rome (one Gallienus, solo rule, 260-268 AD). Dacia was cut off from the Roman world. By about 273, the province had been permanently abandoned by Gallienus’s successor but one, Aurelian, who considered it militarily untenable.
Precisely what occurred in that dark decade can only be speculation, but it is probable that the highly Romanised local authorities, civil and military, organised a form of resistance. Much the same happened in slightly-better-documented post-Roman Britain, after 410 AD. The provincial Roman authorities in Dacia had at least one big local asset: their gold mines and the metallurgical skills to exploit them. The Sponsian hoard’s provenance in Transylvania may (only may) suggest it was discovered near the ruins of the Roman legionary complex at ancient Apulum, and was therefore intended as part of the military payroll. A further hypothesis, not necessarily mutually exclusive of the above, is that these coins formed part of a wider production run whose alternative purpose was to pacify the marauding barbarian chiefs with a bribe. Bribery was a well-established arm of Roman foreign policy. For instance, Gordian III’s successor, Philip the Arab (244-249), had paid the Persian king an enormous sum of gold as a sweetener for a rather ignominious peace deal.
The large denomination and crude workmanship of the gold coins lend credence to this theory. Why large? Because the gold was essentially bullion with an imperial assay mark on it (in this case, the head of Gordian III). It was destined not for circulation (barbarian tribes barely used coinage, depending instead on a barter economy), but to be melted down and commuted into items of elite status, such as jewellery and ornamentation. Why, in particular, a fake likeness of Gordian III? Because he was one of the last two metropolitan Roman emperors (the other being Philip) whose jurisdiction had been universally accepted in Dacia. Even 20 years after Gordian’s death, smaller denominations of his coinage would likely have had wide currency.
Not so, however, the double aureus, an extremely rare high-value denomination first minted in the early third century, but only in Rome. The coin engraver evidently had access to one of these, if only as a model, because the legend on both sides of the “fake” coin bears a close, though corrupt, resemblance to the genuine item1. Who would be checking for precision and literacy? Barbarian chiefs, excepting those who had served in the Roman army, were illiterate. The general appearance, and quality of the metal, would have been what counted.
So, if the fake Gordian binio has some claim to genuine recognition, must we follow suit with its smaller bedfellow, on which the historical identity of the Emperor Sponsian rests?
Not necessarily. According to Pearson’s research they are probably drawn from the same gold bullion and presumably minted (or moulded) by the same engraver at about the same time. But some of the stylistic features of the Sponsian coin are decidedly odd: Mary Beard is surely right to retain her reservations.
Note first of all the smaller diameter of the coin. This is more like an aureus than a binio. Yet stylistically the emperor’s bust, facing right, is wrong – because he is wearing a radiate crown (used only on double denomination coins like the binio and double denarius) when he should be wearing a laureate one. Moreover, the legend around the coin’s “head” (or obverse) is much abbreviated and barely makes sense. It says simply: IMP(erator/-is) SPONSIANI. In formal Latin, the emperor’s name would be “Sponsianus”, which might well be reduced to the simpler “Sponsian” on the limited space of a coin’s field. But not to “Sponsiani”, which implies the genitive case – “of Sponsian”.
OK, so just an engraver’s schoolboy error. Stuff happens, especially in a crisis. But what about the engraved head of Sponsian himself? This bears an uncanny resemblance to the head on Sponsian’s big-brother coin. For the very good reason that it is based on exactly the same model: Gordian III. Both, for example, are clean-shaven. That’s rare in mid-3rd century Roman coin portraiture. Emperors of the time affected a military style – en brosse haircut and stubbly beard – not unreasonably, since they spent most of their short reigns on the frontiers rallying their troops. Gordian III, unusually for these troubled times, was a boy emperor: he ascended the throne when he was only 13 and died (in battle, or maybe through treachery) aged nearly 19. The coin engravers in Rome, who prided themselves on their skilful realism, accurately portrayed him as beardless.
What are the odds that our Sponsian was also a beardless youth? Given the circumstances in Dacia at the time, very long I would imagine.
So, all we are left with at the end of this lengthy investigation into 3rd century AD Roman numismatics is a name, “Sponsiani”, and a corrupt one at that.
I wouldn’t rewrite the history books just yet.
(1) A near-contemporary binio has recently been found in western Hungary (formerly Pannonia – like Dacia, a Roman province situated on the troubled Danubian frontier). The coin dates to the reign of Volusian (251-253 AD); it was minted in Rome. Alternatively, lacking a genuine binio, the local engraver may have used a double denarius (also known as an antoninianus) as his model. This (originally) silver coin was about the same diameter as the binio and was similar stylistically, in that it invariably profiled the emperor, in a radiate crown, facing right. Reinforcing this theory is the reverse of the “fake” binio. It features Mars standing right, with the legend (corrupted but identifiable) Martem Propugnatorem (roughly, Mars Our Champion), a common antoninianus reverse type during the reign of Gordian III. Either way, the engraver had his work cut out in creating his own copied images, which circumstantially argues for the coin being authentic. A forger, ancient or more modern, would surely have used an impression of a genuine antoninianus (of low intrinsic value, because by 260 AD it had become heavily debased; and much greater availability) as his image ‘hub’ when building the coin mould.