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Message:: [QUOTE="dltsrq, post: 25264648, member: 75482"]There was a lot of tinkering with the subsidiary coinage in the 4th century. Both numismatic and documentary evidence suggest a number of major reforms accompanied in some cases with demonetization. Codex Theodosianus 9.23.1.3, a law of Constantius II and Julian Caesar dated to 356, provides that any merchant found in possession of "any coin other than that which continues in public use" shall have both the coins and his merchandise confiscated. The date coincides roughly with the second 'Fel Temp Reparatio' reform which introduced the reduced AE3 fallen horseman coins. Additionally, the law bans inter-provincial trade (speculation?) in coins per se, suggesting that not all coins were equally valued or equally distributed in all places. Specifically mentioned are the maiorina and the centenionalis, along with "other moneys known to be forbidden". Current thinking takes "maiorina" to refer to the large 'Fel Temp Reparatio' coins and "centenionalis" to mean the Constantinian bronzes of 318-348. "Forbidden money" is almost certainly a reference to the coins of Magnentius and Decentius. The Latin is ambiguous in places and the fine points remain open to debate, however. Another law, Codex Theodosianus 9.23.2, this time of Arcadius and Honorius in 395, authorizes the continued use of a coin again called centenionalis while "larger coins", specifically the decargyrus, are to be withdrawn. Here, "centenionalis" almost certainly refers to the AE3/4 of the period while the "decargyrus" is believed to be the Theodosian AE2. One takeaway is that the AE1, 2, 3 or 4 of one period is not necessarily the AE1, 2, 3 or 4 of another. We use those those generic terms specifically because we don't know precisely which coin is which and how the coins of one period compare with those of another.[/QUOTE]

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