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Message:: [QUOTE="lehmansterms, post: 3153315, member: 80804"]As long as we're on the subject, it's probably useful to point out that these coins have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with barbarians - they were not manufactured by barbaric people - and it's really a highly arguable point that "barbarous" as a modifier is appropriate rather than just a lingering arbitrary artistic value judgement decided upon by rich and snobbish Victorian men whose artistic horizons were mighty close to home. These coins were made and used by precisely the same people who used the coins which they copy. They were created to bolster, and in some cases replace, the supplies of coinage familiar in an area when there were no longer adequate supplies of Imperial coin adequate to carry on business coming into that area. "Contemporary Copy" would come a lot closer as a descriptive name - and would also subsume a few other types of unofficial ancient coinage including the very few (other than the relatively plentiful foil-wrap denarii) which were actually created to fool people into thinking they were genuine and official issues (ie: what we would call "counterfeit"). You can't seriously think these so-called "barbarous" coins were ever intended to fool anyone familiar with the authentic item into thinking they were official.[/QUOTE]