06-04-2007, 02:50 AM
Quote:A friend of mine who's a Roman coin dealer mentioned to me just the other day that he's obtained a few examples of 'official counterfeit' denarii- struck on site in Britannia by the invasion forces to pay their soldiers
As far as I know (from the curator of Roman coins at the British
Museum) one of the reasons for coming to Britain in the first place
was the 1st c. AD shortage of silver (for coinage etc) because Britain
had some of the best silver mines in Europe. And such was the
shortage of silver for minting denarii (the standard denomination
used for paying the army) that the Claudian invasion in 43 AD was
actually still being paid largely in Republican denarii, which were
100, 200, even 300 years old at the time! Many of these early denarii
are found on Roman military sites in Britain, and do not - of course -
mean that Claudius arrived here in the 3rd c. BC 8) :lol:
Ambrosius/Mike
"Feel the fire in your bones."