Pre-Long Beach Auction #80

Carausius. Silver Denarius (3.98 g), Romano-British Emperor, AD 287-293. London, ca. AD 287. IMP I CARAVSIVS P F AVG, laureate, draped and cuirassed bust of Carausius right. Reverse RENOVAT ROMANO, she-wolf standing right, suckling the twins Romulus and Remus; RSR (Rs retrograde). Cf. RIC 571; cf. Shiel 68; cf. RSC 82. Very Rare. Toned. Extremely Fine.

Carausius was the commander of the Roman fleet stationed in the English Channel who usurped power, gaining control over Britain and of part of Gaul. While the vast majority of his coin types were debased antoniniani as circulated in the official Empire, he also struck aurei and silver denarii of very high purity, the likes of which had not been seen for many years. The legends and types of his denarii, as is the case with the the coin offered here showing the she-wolf and twins motif combined with the legend RENOVAT ROMANO, evoked traditional Roman virtues. This of course is highly interesting coming from a province at the edge of the Roman world, but it clearly espouses Carausius' ideology that he was in fact restoring Rome and not simply another military opportunist as had beset the Roman Empire for the past half century.

Of more novel interest is the abbreviation RSR in the exergue. This had always been assumed to be a mintmark, the precise meaning never satisfactorily resolved. However, it turns out that it is not actually a mintmark at all! Guy de la Bédoyère, "Carausius, RSR and I.N.P.C.D.A," NC 1998, pp. 79-88, shows a Virgilian connection, the RSR being an abbreviation for Redeunt Saturnia regna, and INPCDA found on other Carausian coins the abbreviation for Iam nova progenies, cælo Demittitur alto. These phrases come from the sixth and seventh lines of Virgil's Fourth Eclogue on the Golden Age, and translate "now Virgin Justice returns, and Saturn's reign: now a new race descends from the heavens above." Any educated person in the Roman world would have recognized the abbreviation; thus it played perfectly into Carausius's clearly-defined ideology of restoring the virtues of Rome.
Estimated Value $4,000 - 5,000.
Ex Helios 4 (14 October 2009), 694; A. Lynn Collection; CNG 54 (14 June 2000), 1792.