The Flip of a Coin – Discovering Sponsianus: The Emperor of Transylvania (Part Two)

The history of Transylvania is not just the preserve of Romanians, Hungarians, and Saxons. There are deeper parts to its past, but these are easy to miss among the Saxon fortified churches, the Hungarian aristocratic mansions, and the wooden Orthodox churches of Romanians. Not to mention the ruined castles, folk customs dating to the Middle Ages, and a pastoral landscape par excellence. Amid such an ecstatic and evocative rusticity, the visitor forgets that the region was also once part of the Roman Empire. Specifically, the province of Dacia. Most famously, Dacia was conquered during the reign of Trajan (98 – 117 AD). Fittingly, Trajan’s conquest came at the zenith of Rome’s territorial expansion. 

For the Romans, Dacia was a valuable region due to its wealth of precious metals. It was also a frontier region, one that would prove difficult to defend, particularly during the Crisis of the Third Century (235 – 284 AD). During this period, the province was plagued by internal strife and barbarian attacks. Dacia was virtually on its own from the 240s – 260s as its inhabitants were left to fend for themselves. Some believe that during this chaotic period a military commander by the name of Sponsianus was declared emperor. There are only a few pieces of evidence for this claim, but that evidence has just been strengthened by recent scholarly work. That work has also strengthened the idea that Sponsianus might be added to the list of Roman Emperors.

Heads up – Comparison of Sponsian coins from the Hunterian (on the left) and Bruckenthal Museums (on the right)

Buried Treasures – Coin Collecting
Samuel von Bruckenthal had a keen eye when it came to collecting. Most famously, he collected over a thousand paintings, including many Old Masters which can still be viewed today in the Bruckenthal National Museum located amid the architectural elegance of the Upper Town in Sibiu, Romania. Bruckenthal’s impulse for collecting was stimulated by the many years he spent as a Habsburg imperial official in Vienna. This gave him access to antiquarian treasures available in the city. Bruckenthal amassed a collection of 17,000 coins that ran the gamut from ancient Greek and Roman pieces to rare finds from his homeland in Transylvania. He was always on the lookout for more rare coins. To this end, Bruckenthal’s interest must have been piqued when he came across some coins that had been discovered in 1713 near Sibiu. The city would be Bruckenthal’s home during his reign as Governor of Transylvania from 1774 – 1787. Furthermore, he had grown up in a village just 35 kilometers northeast of Sibiu. Thus, he was intimately familiar with the region’s history and landscape.

The coins discovered near Sibiu had a deep history that hearkened back to the earliest known times in Transylvania. After their discovery, they found their way to the Imperial Collection in Vienna. Bruckenthal, or someone acting on his behalf, purchased some of the coins which included one that depicted a potential Roman Emperor known as Sponsianus. Four more coins depicting Sponsianus made their way onto the market in Vienna. These were bought by William Hunter and eventually ended up in the collections of the Hunterian Museum at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. Both Hunter and Bruckenthal would not have purchased the coins unless they considered them authentic. One famous story was that just before his death Bruckenthal had been studying the coin and declared that it was genuine. Others would later disagree with his assessment.

Collector extraordinaire – Samuel von Bruckenthal

Competing Claims – The Real Thing
In 1863, a numismatics expert by the name of Henry Cohen working for the French National Library closely studied the Sponsian coins to decide whether they should be included in his catalog of Roman coins. Cohen was unsparing in his opinion that the coins were poorly produced counterfeits. He went so far as to say they had been “ridiculously imagined.” Cohen’s opinion was echoed by other scholars down to the present day. For over 150 years, the idea that these coins were forgeries went unchallenged. That was until Paul Pearson, a professor at University College London, came across a photo of a Sponsian coin while working on a book about the Roman Empire. Pearson noticed scratches on the coin’s surface that he believed would have only occurred while in circulation.

Pearson took it upon himself to contact the Hunterian. Staff were open to his proposal to see if his hypothesize was indeed true. Using high powered spectrometry with an electron microscope, Pearson and a team of researchers scrutinized the abrasions. They also did chemical analysis of the soil found on the coins. Their conclusion was that the coins were indeed real. The team soon contacted the Bruckenthal National Museum about the Sponsian coin in that collection, informing the Bruckenthal’s administrators that their coin is also genuine. Pearson’s findings went public in the peer reviewed Public Library of Science (PLOS One) Journal. The article thoroughly outlines the technological and comparative processes used to authenticate the coins.

Pearson’s claim has not been without controversy. It has drawn strong opposition from skeptical scholars who have offered a variety of criticisms. The criticisms included that the proof of abrasions and soil samples are still not conclusive enough for the coins to be regarded as genuine. They also mention that the coin was cast rather than struck. One scholar went so far as to state that Pearson and the team he worked with went “full fantasy” with their claim. Conversely, news media outlets were more than happy to report that not only were the Sponsian coins genuine, but that a new Roman Emperor had been discovered.

Hallowed halls – Hunterian Museum in Glasgow

Dynamic Discoveries – A New Reality
It is not often that Roman Emperors or rare coins make international headlines, but the Sponsian coins and the possibility that Sponsianus was a Roman Emperor are sensational enough that the controversy about their authentication is unlikely to abate anytime soon. Whether or not the coins are genuine is still open to debate, but the fact that powerful technologies and re-examination of existing artifacts can potentially lead to new discoveries is worth celebrating. The renewed interest and controversy inspired by the coins offers a striking illustration of how history is being constantly revised. The past is just as dynamic and fluid as the present. Old discoveries can become new ones. The Sponsian coins are proof of that. Reality or forgery, their story is only going to continue.

From Sibiu To Glasgow – Discovering Sponsianus: The Emperor of Transylvania (Part One)

One of the great wonders of history is its dynamism. The historical record is not written once and for all time, it is revised each day. Sometimes the changes in it are infinitesimal to the public. That is because deep studies of history often occur within academia. Whether because of inaccessibility or indifference, lack of promotion or willful ignorance, the public knows little about them. That is until a stunning revelation is made by assimilating evidence from a variety of sources. The cumulative weight of which leads to new discoveries and reinterpretation of long-established truths. These are the proverbial buried treasures that have been unearthed by scholars. They paint a different, more accurate picture of the past.

Increasingly, technology is being used to piece together disparate parts of the past to provide unique perspectives. Overlooked possibilities can arise by revisiting an old discovery using the newer technologies. This means that history is not just the preserve of historians and archeologists, but also information technology specialists and scientists from a variety of disciplines. By using an interdisciplinary approach, astonishing conclusions can be reached that add new chapters to the historical record. This is the case with the reevaluation of a few coins discovered in Transylvania during the early 18th century. Their reevaluation has added a potential new name to the list of Roman Emperors.

Sponsianus – Empire Builder

Fifty Years of Chaos – A Time of Troubles
The list of Roman Emperors is populated with names both famous and infamous. There are the glorious reigns of Augustus, Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius, the madness of Caligula, Nero and Elagabalus, the philosophical wonder of Marcus Aurelius and the transformative reigns of tough Balkan-soldier emperors such as Diocletian and Constantine. For each one of these memorable men, there are many more forgettable emperors who presided over periods of decline where they were unable to arrest the empire’s movement towards collapse. Many died at the hands of their own soldiers or other usurpers. Even for students of the Roman Empire, remembering all the different emperors can be difficult. Take for instance the Crisis of the Third Century. The Crisis stretches neatly into a fifty-year window from 235 – 284 AD. Those dates are about the only neat thing about this troublesome time period. It was messy in the extreme with emperors being deposed numerous times.

Trying to account for just how many emperors there were during the Crisis is difficult. By one count there were 22, another says 24, still another gives the number as 26 emperors in a fifty-year period. There were likely more than that depending upon how they are counted, Disgruntled legions were prone to anoint their own emperor if there needs were not met by the current one. The only leaders who could survive in this environment were military commanders, but not for long. A good rule of thumb for this chaotic time period is one emperor every two years, but this also masks periods when the situation was much worse. The ultimate example is the so called “Year of Six Emperors” in 238.  No less than six different dynasties rose and fell during the Crisis, but that is being very liberal with the definition of dynasty since one lasted six years and another for only eight.

One of many – Emperor Pupienus the 4th of six emperors in 238

Beyond All Control – A Game of Survival
Surviving any length of time amid the internal tumult of the Roman Empire during the mid-3rd century was quite an achievement. Those who ascended to the position of emperor during this time had virtually no chance of dying a natural death. Because of the fluid situation in leadership and the empire’s sprawling geography, there could be multiple emperors at the same time. This was due to succession crises, internal civil wars, and incursions across borders from barbarian tribes. This meant that strongman military leaders were greatly valued. Other factors such as pandemics tended to exacerbate the chaos. It is nothing short of incredible that the empire did not collapse during this period. Nonetheless, the empire was severely weakened and would never reattain the strength it had prior to the 3^rd century.  

In the absence of centralized control, far flung regions of the empire were on their own. This was what happened in Dacia (modern day Romania), a province that Rome was on the verge of losing to Gothic tribes. At times during the Crisis, Dacia was cut off from the rest of the empire. With imperial oversight from Rome negligible, the citizens had little choice but to throw their support behind a leader that could help them survive. This may have been the case with a man by the name of Sponsianus, probably a military leader who was declared Emperor sometime between the 240s-260s. For centuries, scholars rejected the claim that Sponsianus was a Roman emperor. The basis for these claims were a handful of coins bearing his likeness. These were thought to be counterfeit, but through the wonders of technology and some serious sleuthing by scholars, Sponsianus’ name is now being added by some to the long list of short-lived Roman emperors who reigned over a splintering empire.

Point of Collection – Bruckenthal National Museum (Credit: Dragos Dumitru)

Point of Collection – Bruckenthal’s Treasures
Anyone who visits the Transylvanian city of Sibiu will be struck by how much the city looks and feels like a German one. The Germanic influence is pronounced in everything from the seeing eye windows on Saxon houses in the Lower Town to the massive Evangelical Lutheran Cathedral in the Upper Town. The very un-Romanian name of Bruckenthal dominates tourism in the city. That is because Samuel von Bruckenthal, the one and only Saxon to become Governor of Transylvania, built a Baroque Palace in the city center and bequeathed to his beloved city an incredible amount of treasures to be displayed in what became Romania’s first museum. The Bruckenthal National Museum holds one of Europe’s greatest collections of art, prints, maps, books and numismatics. The stars of Bruckenthal’s collection include over a thousand paintings from the 15^th – 18^th century, a voluminous library with 16,000 books and a collection of 17,000 coins.

Bruckenthal obtained many items for the collection in Vienna where he spent time at the court of Maria Theresa, but it is an item that came to him from much closer to home that has made the news lately. In 1713, a hoard of coins was discovered near Sibiu. Several of these from the Roman era showed the image of Sponsianus. Some thought the coins were counterfeits, but at least one became part of Bruckenthal’s collection. Three more made their way to The Hunterian Museum at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. They lay neglected while stored in a cupboard. That was until Professor Paul Pearson from University College, London came calling after seeing a photo of the coin in a book. This may or may not have been the beginning of an amazing rediscovery.

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