The numismatic chronicle and journal of the Royal Numismatic Society

COINAGE AND CUKRENCY IN ROMAN BRITAIN. 501
refined metal at a fixed rate from the contractors or
private proprietors who worked the mines, giving the
legal equivalent in current coin of the same metal.
The other factor in the exceptional phenomenon
presented by the occurrence of these British hoards
is to be found in the divergent course of our insular
history. Whereas in other parts of the Western
Empire the supreme catastrophe which put an end
to Roman, dominion did not take place till the middle
and third quarter of the fifth century, in Britain it
already anticipated
itself in the middle of the third.
Already as a result of the invasions of Julian's time
the island seemed about to be divided up between
Picts and Scots and Attacotti and Saxons. The
victories indeed of Valentinian's great general gave
Roman life in Britain a respite, but the renewed raids
and the successive withdrawals of the legions by
Stilicho and Constantino III in the first years of the
fifth century were rapidly followed by its final over-
throw.
But both the first and the second of these main
tides of barbarian invasion in Britain took place
at a time when, at any rate in the mining district
referred to above, there was a considerable amount
of silver currency for the panic-stricken inhabitants
to hide in the earth. In Gaul and other Continental
regions where the final blow fell somewhat later on
in the fifth century there was practically no silver
currency to stow away. It is a significant fact that
no silver issues of Honorius bear a reference to any
date beyond his third Quiiiquennalia ;
in other words,
there seems to have been a great cessation of silver
coinage in or shortly after A.D. 408 almost the exact