From: imbibe@mindspring.com   
      
   Gold coin proves 'fake' Roman emperor was real   
   By Pallab Ghosh, Nov. 23, 2022, BBC   
      
   An ancient gold coin proves that a 3rd c. Roman emperor written out of history   
   as a fictional character really did exist, scientists say.   
      
   The coin bearing the name of Sponsian and his portrait was found more than 300   
   years ago in Transylvania, once a far-flung outpost of the Roman empire.   
      
   Believed to be a fake, it had been locked away in a museum cupboard.   
      
   Now scientists say scratch marks visible under a microscope prove that it was   
   in circulation 2,000 years ago.   
      
   Prof Paul Pearson University College London, who led the research, told BBC   
   News that he was astonished by the discovery.   
      
   "What we have found is an emperor. He was a figure thought to have been a fake   
   and written off by the experts.   
      
   "But we think he was real and that he had a role in history."   
      
   The coin at the centre of the story was among a small hoard discovered in   
   1713. It was thought to have been a genuine Roman coin until the mid-19th   
   century, when experts suspected that they might have been produced by forgers   
   of the time, because of    
   their crude design.   
      
   The final blow came in 1863 when Henry Cohen, the leading coin expert of the   
   time at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, considered the problem for his   
   great catalogue of Roman coins. He said that they were not only 'modern'   
   fakes, but poorly made and    
   "ridiculously imagined". Other specialists agreed and to this day Sponsian has   
   been dismissed in scholarly catalogues.   
      
   But Prof Pearson suspected otherwise when he saw photographs of the coin while   
   researching for a book about the history of the Roman empire. He could make   
   out scratches on its surface that he thought might have been produced by the   
   coin being in    
   circulation.   
      
   He contacted the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow University where the coin had   
   been kept locked away in a cupboard along with three others from the original   
   hoard, and asked if he could work with the researchers there.   
      
   They examined all four coins under a powerful microscope and confirmed in the   
   journal, PLOS 1, that there really were scratches, and the patterns were   
   consistent with them being jingled around in purses.   
      
   A chemical analysis also showed that the coins had been buried in soil for   
   hundreds of years, according to Jesper Ericsson, who is the museum's curator   
   of coins and worked with Prof Pearson on the project.   
      
   The researchers now have to answer the question, who was Sponsian?   
      
   The researchers believe that he was a military commander who was forced to   
   crown himself as emperor of the most distant and difficult to defend province   
   of the Roman empire, called Dacia.   
      
   Archaeological studies have established that Dacia was cut off from the rest   
   of the Roman empire in around 260 CE. There was a pandemic, civil war and the   
   empire was fragmenting.   
      
   Surrounded by enemies and cut off from Rome, Sponsian likely 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 271-275 CE,    
   according to Jesper Ericsson.   
      
   "Our interpretation is that he was in charge to maintain control of the   
   military and of the civilian population because they were surrounded and   
   completely cut off," he said. "In order to create a functioning economy in the   
   province they decided to mint    
   their own coins."   
      
   This theory would explain why the coins are unlike those from Rome.   
      
   "They may not have known who the actual emperor was because there was civil   
   war," says Prof Pearson.   
      
   "But what they needed was a supreme military commander in the absence of real   
   power from Rome. He took command at a period when command was needed."   
      
   Once the researchers had established that the coins were authentic, and that   
   they had discovered what they believed to be a lost Roman emperor, they   
   alerted researchers at the Brukenthal Museum in Sibiu in Transylvania, which   
   also has a Sponsian coin. It    
   was part of the bequest of Baron Samuel von Brukenthal, the Habsburg Governor   
   of Transylvania. The Baron was studying the coin at the time of his death and   
   the story goes that the last thing he did was to write a note saying "genuine".   
      
   The specialists at the Brukenthal museum had classified their coin as an   
   historic fake, as had everyone else. But they changed their minds when they   
   saw the UK research.   
      
   The discovery is of particular interest for the history of Transylvania and   
   Romania, according to the interim manager of the Brukenthal National Museum,   
   Alexandru C. Chituță.   
      
   "For the history of Transylvania and Romania in particular, but also for the   
   history of Europe in general, if these results are accepted by the scientific   
   community, they will mean the addition of another important historical figure   
   in our history," he    
   said.   
      
   https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63636641   
      
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