Carausius

His initial issues show him as rough and thuggish, though the technical standard of die cutting on good specimens can be seen to be excellent. The intention was to portray a rough and thuggish man; his later coins show him as trim and beneficent.[8]

He struck coins that showed three portrait heads on the reverse instead of the usual one, and a legend on the obverse including PAX AVGGG, the peace of three Augusti. This would imply that he was recognized by the other two current Augusti, Diocletian and Maximian, but their own coins of the time proclaim the attributes of only two Augusti, PAX AVGG.[9] Carausius also had himself depicted as a member of the Tetrarchy's college of emperors, issuing coins with the legend CARAVSIVS ET FRATRES SVI, 'Carausius and his brothers' with portraits of himself with Diocletian and Maximian.[10]

Carausius appears to have appealed to native British dissatisfaction with Roman rule; he issued coins with legends such as Restitutor Britanniae (Restorer of Britain) and Genius Britanniae (Spirit of Britain). Some of these silver coins bear the legend Expectate veni, "Come long-awaited one", recognised to allude to a messianic line in the Aeneid by the Augustan poet Virgil, written more than 300 years previously.[11]

Some of the silver coins bear the legend RSR in the exergue (an area on a coin below the legend). This was considered a mystery for some time. Three Carausian copper-alloy medallions, now in the British Museum, have also survived. One has the reverse legend VICTOR CARAVSIUS AVG GERM MAX with RSR in the exergue; the second has the reverse legend VICTOR CARAVSI AVG ('The Victory of Carausius Augustus') with INPCDA in the exergue; and the third is too damaged for an exergue legend to be visible but bears the reverse legend PACATOR ORBIS 'Peace-bringer to the world'. The medallions depict Carausius in consular garb and are around 34-35 mm, weighing ~22 g. The medals appeared on the market in the twentieth century and reached the British Museum in 1972, 1967 (this one was first shown to the Museum in 1931) and 1997 respectively. All bear evidence of chemical corrosion resulting from burial of some sort as can be seen from their present appearance.[12][13][14]

Since 1998 these letters have been recognised as representing the sixth and seventh lines of the Fourth Eclogue of Virgil, which reads Redeunt Saturnia Regna, Iam Nova Progenies Caelo Demittitur Alto, meaning "The Golden Ages are back, now a new generation is let down from Heaven above". Virgil's works, or at any rate quotations from them, were current in Roman popular culture. Suetonius cites three instances in which Virgilian lines were quoted.[15] Cassius Dio cites an instance of a praetorian tribune quoting Virgil as a means of criticising Septimius Severus after an attack on Hatra went badly in 199.[16][17]

Copper-alloy medallions already existed in the contemporary repertoire of imperial Roman coinage so Carausius' production should not be considered exceptional. Numerian (283-4) and his brother Carinus (283-5) both issued copper-alloy medallions of similar size and weight to those of Carausius, often depicting the three Monetae (goddesses of the mint).[18] Another depicts Numerian in consular garb and on the reverse himself and his father Carus in a quadriga pulled by Victory with the legend TRIVNF.QVADOR, 'the triumph over the Quadi tribe', and is clearly similar in tone to the Carausian INPCDA medallion.[19]

Although the Virgilian reference might seem remarkable in the context of late third century Roman Britain it is apparent from other contemporary literature that the Tetrarchy legitimist regime was utilising Virgilian allusions and references in its propaganda, and claiming itself to have restored a Golden Age.[20] 'The rule of Saturn over a golden age is a literary commonplace ... as is the association of any emperor's reign with the same thing'.[21]

An imperial panegyric to Maximian states 'Indeed, as the fact is, those golden ages which once flourished briefly in the reign of Saturn, are now reborn under the perpetual guidance of Jove and Hercules.'[22] Lactantius, a Christian writer of the period and opponent of the Tetrarchs, makes a number of disparaging references to the Tetrarchs and their Saturnian pretensions which seem to be a refutation of official propaganda.[23]

Carausius was claiming to represent a revival of traditional Roman virtues and the great traditions of the Empire as established by Augustus in the last decades of the first century BC, not in Rome but in Britain. However, he appears to have adopted a propaganda theme that was already current in Tetrarchal publicity which corresponds with the use of similar literary allusions.

An alternative school of thought exists which argues the medallions must be eighteenth-century fantasy pieces on the basis that such arcane literary allusions would have been too obscure to Carausius and his army. This argument contends that the antiquarian William Stukeley or someone like him found the RSR on Carausius' silver coinage, and noted that this matched the Redeunt Saturnia Regna (RSR) of the 6th line of the Fourth Eclogue. Thus inspired, the medallions were created with the next line of the Eclogue included on one of them. The central points of this argument are that Stukeley had published a detailed book on Carausius and his coinage,[24] and that the medallions have no known provenance.[25] However, this published argument does not offer any evidence to support Stukeley's involvement or motives (since Stukeley never mentions the medals or a Virgilian expansion of the RSR coins known to him), or include discussion of the literary evidence of the contemporary panegyrics or any of the scholarly publications concerning them, or explain why the medallions appear on the basis of their present appearance to have been buried and why they were unknown until 1931 when the INPCDA one was first brought to the British Museum.