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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Gao, post: 1306746, member: 19409&quot;]Well I can give you a little more context on the Diocletian coin here.&nbsp; In case you don&#039;t already know, the third century AD was a rough time for the Roman Empire.&nbsp; There were plagues, barbarian incursions, political instability, parts of the empire breaking away, and most importantly for coin collectors, massive inflation and debasement.&nbsp; Things started recovering a little towards the end of the third century, particularly under Aurelian, who reconquered lost territory and slightly increased the size and silver content of the antoninianus in an effort to restore the currency.&nbsp; The biggest reformer was the man on the coin in the top picture, Diocletian.&nbsp; He set up a political system called the tetrarchy, where the empire was ruled by two Augusti (Diocletian and Maximianus), who each had a Caesar (Galerius and Constantius I) under them, and when the Augusti would die or retire, the Caesars would become Augusti themselves, and they&#039;d appoint new Caesars.&nbsp; Each of these four ran a portion of the empire, with Diocletian basically having authority over the other three emperors, even though Maximianus should theoretically have been equal.&nbsp; This system worked fairly well while Diocletian was in power, but it fell apart soon afterwards, and the short version is that Constantine eventually took over the entire empire.</p><p><br /></p><p>In any case, among other reforms, Diocletian completely reworked the coinage system.&nbsp; What you have there is the largest coin he introduced, called either a follis or nummus (we&#039;re unsure of the official original name, though it seems to have sometimes been referred to as the latter, though that word just means &quot;coin&quot;).&nbsp; It was composed of around 1 part silver to 20 parts base metal, and originally it had a thin coating of silver on the surface, though that doesn&#039;t survive on the majority of these coins.&nbsp; The value of this coin actually changed over time as an attempt to combat the inflation that this coinage reform was unable to stop.&nbsp; We can confirm that at the end of the tetrarchic period, these were worth 25 denarii. The document that tells us this was actually an edict doubling the value, so this means that it probably had the rather odd value of 12.5 denari at one point(though I&#039;ve seen arguments that it was 12 and that he &quot;doubling&quot; was a bit rough).&nbsp; A lot of sources also think that it had an even lower value at the beginning, with Kenneth W. Harl putting it at 5 denarii, though we can&#039;t confirm that on the level as the other prices.&nbsp; If you want a rather rough idea of what this coin could buy, check out The Edict on Maximum Prices: <a href="http://[URL=&amp;quot;[url]http://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=Edict[/url] of Diocletian Edict on Prices&amp;quot;" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://[URL=&amp;quot;[url]http://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=Edict[/url] of Diocletian Edict on Prices&amp;quot;" rel="nofollow">http://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=Edict of Diocletian Edict on Prices</a>.&nbsp; Basically, during the period when this coin was worth 25 denarii, Diocletan imposed price ceilings to try to fight inflation, though it was rather unsuccessful.&nbsp; This is the closest thing we have to market prices for most of these things, as flawed as it is.</p><p><br /></p><p>Regarding the imagery, one interesting thing about tetrarchic coinage is that the bust represents the idea of &quot;emperor&quot; rather than any emperor&#039;s actual face.&nbsp; This means that all four emperors are depicted identically.&nbsp; Regarding the mint, normally there&#039;s a mint mark in the reverse exergue during this period, but this is one of the few types that doesn&#039;t (you can see the reverse in the <a href="http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?type=3&amp;campid=5335874456&amp;toolid=10001&amp;mpre=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fitm%2F250930609576%3FssPageName%3DSTRK%3AMEWAX%3AIT%26_trksid%3Dp3984.m1423.l2649%23ht_720wt_952" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?type=3&amp;campid=5335874456&amp;toolid=10001&amp;mpre=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fitm%2F250930609576%3FssPageName%3DSTRK%3AMEWAX%3AIT%26_trksid%3Dp3984.m1423.l2649%23ht_720wt_952" rel="nofollow">original auction</a>), but the field marks indicate that it was minted in Siscia.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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