Coin, nummus AE4

A copper alloy nummus of Julian II. Julian was given the title of Caesar (Crown Prince) under his cousin, Emperor Constantius II, in 355 CE. He was elevated to the position of Augustus (Emperor) and ruler of the Roman Empire upon Constantius’s death in 361, and ruled until 363. The back of the coin depicts Julian. This coin was minted in 355-361 CE.

Front (obverse): Bust of Julian II, facing right. Inscription: Illegible.
Back (reverse): Caesar, standing left, holding a globe in his right hand and a vertical spear in his left. Inscription: [SPES REIPVBLICE], 'Hope of the Republic'.

This coin is one of over 300 Roman coins that were found during building work on a site in Bermondsey in 1946, hidden away in a small ceramic bottle. The coins were presumably the savings of somebody who buried them for safe keeping but who, for a reason we shall never know, did not return to recover them.

The coins were not of high value at the time: the equivalent of modern pennies put in a money box. Nevertheless they are interesting because many of them can be dated to the 380s and 390s CE. This is at the very end of the period during which Britain was part of the Roman empire. Coin hoards of this date are not common. Perhaps the bottle was left behind simply because, once Roman government had come to an end, coins no longer had much value and were less often used in everyday transactions.

The hoard is also important because we have very few Roman finds of any type from this part of Bermondsey. In Roman times the site was probably a small island of higher ground among mudflats and river channels, but we have no specific details about the type of habitation there.