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The Coinage of Carausius as a Source of Vulgar Latin Forms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2011

Norman Shiel
Norman Shiel
Affiliation:
9 Topsham Road, Exeter
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Extract

In the course of research on the coinage of Carausius and Allectus I was prompted to a consideration of the word-forms used in the coin-legends with which I was dealing by an article of A. J. Evans in Archaeologia Cambrensis. In drawing a parallel between word-forms on coins and on contemporary inscriptions Evans comments that variations from classical Latin spellings are generally dismissed as ‘the mere haphazard blunderings of barbarous engravers’. That this is true in some cases is beyond doubt, but ‘many of the most characteristic forms occur on coins that are not otherwise of barbarous fabric’ and Evans goes on to make the point that ‘a large proportion of the forms common to these Roman-British coins and monuments are due to the influence of the provincial dialect, and exhibit undoubted characteristics of incipient Romance pronunciation and Romance grammatical simplification’.

Type
Articles
Information
Britannia , Volume 6 , November 1975 , pp. 146 - 149
Copyright
Copyright © Norman Shiel 1975. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Arch. Camb. 1888, pp. 150 ff.

2 ibid.

3 ibid.

4 Britannia ii (1971), 218–24.Google Scholar

5 Carson, R. A. G., ‘The Sequence-marks on the Coinage of Carausius and Allectus’ in Carson, R. A. G. (ed.), Mints, Dies and Currency (London 1971), 57–65.Google Scholar

6 Aurelius Victor, de Caes. 39.41 and Kent, J. P. C. ‘The Relations and Gradual Separation of the Finance Departments in the Third and Fourth Centuries’ (unpublished thesis submitted for degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of London in 1951).Google Scholar

7 Mattingly, H. and Sydenham, E. A. (eds.), Roman Imperial Coinage, v, part ii, by Webb, P. H. (London, repr. 1968)Google Scholar; cf. Mionnet, T. E., De la rareté et du prix des médailles romaines (Paris 1858).Google Scholar

8 Webb, op. cit. (note 7), calls this a ‘Gallic version’.

9 This may be a specifically eastern mutation but cf. Mann, op. cit. (note 4), 221 and n. 7.

10 =Cretensi in the legend Herculi Cretensi.

11 cf. Ephem. Epig. vii, 1141.