Subject: Tacitus Image reduced to a usable size and text
Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 22:50:58 EST
From: VGarn80584@aol.com
To: dave.surber@wildwinds.com

Dave:

Here's the image of that Tacitus reduced to a usable size and the text
addition for the documentation. I hope you can use this. Thanks

Vel

Stephen Coulter writes...

It's Gaul, no doubt about it. RIC 69 is the only exact match for the coin,
and
the style is clearly Gaulish as well. (If "Gaulish" is a word). The reason
RIC
lists the mint as Gaul is because the mint was probably moved for a time
from
Lugdunum and then moved back before the end of the reign. There are coins
marked
with an "A", where A is clearly a city mark, since it occurs with officina
marks,
as "A/A, A/B", etc. There are other coins marked with an L. My own guess
(not
exclusively mine) is that the "A" city is Arelate, and that the mint was
moved
due to pressure by the barbarians. To move the mint would only have required
loading the dies, bullion, and workers on barges and floating them down the
Rhone. If you look at the map, you'll see that it would have been fairly
easy
for
the barbarians, once they crossed the Vosges, to hold Lugdunum en prise;
since it
was the major mint for the commands on the Rhine and upper Danube, it would
have
been important to the Romans to keep it functioning. The Germans managed to
pass
light armor through those mountains in 1940, so fast-moving barbarians would
likely have been able to move through there as well.

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