Rare ancient Roman treasure unearthed by metal detectorists in Poland

WillieBoyd2

From CBS News:

Metal detectorists in Poland helped discover a large cache of ancient Roman coins, Polish officials announced.

The "Group of Explorers" regularly search for metal artifacts and treasures, according to a social media post Friday from the Lublin Voivodeship Conservator of Monuments. The group, began a search of the fields surrounding the small town of Ksiezopol.

The rarest items found by the searchers were a small cache of ancient Roman denars, or silver coins. There were three silver denars imprinted with the face of Roman emperor Antonius Pius, minted sometime between 138 and 161, as well as a silver denar imprinted with the face of his wife, Faustina the Younger, minted in 141. A fourth coin with the face of Antonius Pius was found, but this one was minted between 146 and 152, and a part had been intentionally cut away, likely during a trade exchange, according to the conservator. There was also a silver denar with the face of Marcus Aurelius, minted in 174.

There were also some counterfeit denars, made by the Germanic Visigoths. One coin could not be read, but another was again of Antonius Pius. This counterfeit coin is "poorly readable," the conservator noted, but has an image of the emperor and a copy of the inscription on the real coins.

CBS News Article:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rare-ancient-roman-treasure-unearthed-by-metal-detectorists-in-poland

I like the idea that any coin of Antonius Pius can be considered "rare".

Sapyx

@WillieBoyd2 said:
I like the idea that any coin of Antonius Pius can be considered "rare".

Well, to be fair, finding any Roman coin is rare in Poland, since Poland is well beyond the boundary of Roman territory. Finding Roman coins in a proper archaeological context in Germany is scarce enough, and Poland is even further out into the darkness (from the Roman point of view). I'd imagine this treasure-hunting group in Poland would be mostly used to finding relics from WWI or WWII.

"Denar" is, of course, the Polish name for the coins, which for some reason has not properly translated. In English, we normally call them a "denarius".

I'd like to see the "Visigothic denarius". The Visigoths didn't arrive on the Roman borders until around AD 300, long after Antoninus Pius denarii would have vanished from circulation, and generally lived far to the south of Poland. So it probably is "barbaric imitative", but not Visigothic.