The face that didn’t fit
Few historians had heard of Domitianus – until a single coin suggested he may have been Roman emperor
Back in 2003, a metal-detectorist called Brian Malin was scouring farmland near Chalgrove, not far from Oxford, when he discovered a jar containing 4,957 Roman coins dating to between AD 251 and 279. The Chalgrove (II) hoard, as it’s known, was a significant find but, seemingly, nothing out of the ordinary – after all, more than 600 hoards are known to have been discovered in Britain from this period.
But then the coins were taken to the British Museum to be conserved and identified – and everything changed. For staring out from one of the coins was an individual that no one expected to see. He was a Roman emperor named Domitianus – and, until then, many historians didn’t even believe he existed.
This wasnot the first time that Domitianus had appeared on archaeologists’ radars. An identical coin, rediscovered in 2003, was found in a hoard in France in 1900, yet some scholars rejected it as a hoax because there was no supporting evidence for Domitianus. We now have that evidence, and it has enabled us to paint a partial picture of this little-known emperor.
Domitianus was, it seems, a very short-lived emperor of the Gallic empire, a breakaway state that existed north of the Alps between AD 260 and 274. A general of the same name was involved in a failed revolt in Milan in AD 268, but it is unclear if this is the same individual.
What we do know is that Domitianus became emperor in Gaul for a few days or weeks in AD 271. It was, it appears, the shortest of reigns – but time enough, at least, to mint a few coins!
Sam Moorhead,
national finds adviser, British Museum