The analysis confirmed the presence of scratches and other signs of wear and tear commonly seen in genuine Roman coins. Advertisementįurther Reading A physicist studied Ben Franklin’s clever tricks to foil currency counterfeiters They did the same for two other Roman coins whose authenticity had been confirmed for comparison purposes. (The coins once belonged to one William Hunter, who likely acquired them from the estate of a well-known Viennese antiquarian named Joseph de France.) Those methods included classic light microscopy, ultraviolet imaging, scanning electron microscopy, and reflection mode Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy. Pearson and his co-authors employed a range of analytic techniques for four of the coins from that 18th-century cache in the Hunterian collection, including the Sponsian coin and coins inscribed with the names of Plautius, Philip the Arab, and Gordian III. He noted small scratches on the surface and thought this could be evidence that the coin might have been in circulation since coins carried about in purses or pouches tended to get scratched. Pearson saw photographs of the Hunterian coin while researching a book on the history of the Roman Empire during the pandemic. AdvertisementĬo-author Paul Pearson of University College London spearheaded this latest project-the first time a Sponsian coin has been subjected to scientific analysis. Things didn't stabilize politically until Diocletian rose to power and restructured the imperial government in 284. Due to the resulting currency debasement and economic collapse, by the 260s, there were three competing states: the Gallic Empire, the Palmyrene Empire, and the Italy-centric Roman Empire caught between them. After the assassination of Emperor Severus Alexander-by his own troops, no less-the Roman Empire was besieged by barbarian invasions, peasant rebellions, civil wars, a pandemic (the Plague of Cyprian), and the rise of multiple usurpers vying for power. Per the authors, he was most likely active during a critical period of unrest during the 3rd century CE. Sponsian (or Sponsianus) seems to have been an obscure Roman military commander in the Roman province of Dacia, an isolated gold mining outpost that overlaps with modern-day Romania. "Not only do we hope that this encourages further debate about Sponsian as a historical figure, but also the investigation of coins relating to him held in other museums across Europe." "This has been a really exciting project for the Hunterian and we’re delighted that our findings have inspired collaborative research with museum colleagues in Romania," said co-author Jesper Ericsson, curator of numismatics at the Hunterian. One of the Sponsian coins is now in the Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu, Romania another is part of the Hunterian collection at the University of Glasgow. So Sponsian may have been a real emperor after all. The coins largely have been dismissed as forgeries for more than a century, but a re-analysis using a variety of physics-based methods has yielded evidence that they might be authentic, according to a recent paper published in the journal PLoS ONE. In 1713, a cache of Roman coins was discovered in Transylvania, several of which bore the portrait and name of Sponsian-but there are no historical records of a Roman emperor with that name. The Hunterian, University of Glasgow reader comments 143 with
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