In the past year, Miller Ancients has been fortunate enough to handle two high-value pieces of the short-lived Western Roman usurper Constantine III. The first was a gold solidus, also minted in Lyon, and graded MS by NGC that sold for $6,600 (depicted below). The second is the siliqua depicted above, whose problem-free surfaces, clear portrait, and captivating cerulean tones render it among the finest silver coins of the rare emperor. It sold for $4,200 in Heritage’s 2024 ANA Signature sale, just $50 shy of the previous record for most expensive siliqua of that ruler.

Above: Lyon mint solidus of Constantine III sold by Miller Ancients. Graded NGC MS 5/5 – 1/5, damage. This was the sharpest 5th century solidus I’ve ever seen, and to come on a Constantine III is truly incredible.
 
Constantine rose to power at one of the critical periods in the decline of the Roman Empire in the West. Since his ascension in 395, the young emperor Honorius had largely left the empire in the hands of the general Stilicho, who did a good job of defending the weakening Roman state from its Germanic enemies and preserving the integrity of the army. Stilicho was half Vandal, and thus was able to maintain uneasy alliances with certain Germanic tribes more easily than a full-blooded Roman may have been able to. But in 406, two critical events altered the fragile peace that Stilicho’s combination of diplomacy and military prowess had ensured. First, the Goths invaded and ransacked Italy before being eventually crushed by Stilicho. This on its own would not have radically changed the political landscape. But Stilicho’s Italian victory had a price; with Stilicho occupied in the Mediterranean, the northern frontier was neglected. A massive group of Germans, including Vandals and Sueves, crossed the undefended Rhine River on 31 December 406. This had the immediate effect of opening up the provinces in Germania and Gaul to invasion, lawlessness, and the destruction of Roman central authority. A secondary effect was that the troops in Britain, long denied their pay and feeling stranded, declared Constantine, a common soldier from among their ranks, as emperor.



Gaul then descended into chaos. Constantine’s forces crossed the English Channel and quickly asserted control over much of modern France, but his legions found much of the land was already overrun by the Vandals and Franks and outside Rome’s control. Much of the northern lands of the Roman Empire had become ungovernable. The Visigoths sensed the vulnerability of the Western Roman state and demanded 1,800 kg of gold coins not to invade Italy, a request Stilicho was forced to grant due to Constantine’s rebellion. The Visigoths took the money and, after Stilicho’s death, sacked Rome in 410 anyway.

Below: the last coin of Roman Britain: a solidus of Magnus Maximus, usurper 383-388, struck in London in 384. Britain began to descend into lawlessness in the 370s, and was probably regarded at this point by many Romans as a dangerous backwater from which seemingly endless usurpers rose and fell.

Constantine had briefly been legitimized by the rightful emperor Honorius, but the chaos of the West rendered this legitimacy worthless. Constantine had left a small garrison to defend Britain, where his rebellion had began, but raids by the Germanic Angles and Saxons were far too much for the small Roman forces still stationed on the island. Since the 370s, the province of Britannia had undergone an extraordinarily rapid decline, with all the classical Roman institutions – civic games, the theater, aristocratic estates, baths, and perhaps most importantly the army – seemed to fade away. Constantine’s forces pulled out in 410, after which the inhabitants of Britain were left to fend for themselves against the Germanic pirates and raiders. Though historians today (for good reason) do not like to use the term “Dark Ages,” as it is unfairly pejorative, Britain entered a period remarkably devoid of any scholarly achievement, cultural vibrancy, or even written history. Almost nothing is known of Britain for about two centuries after Constantine’s legions left in 410 – this is the time of the (probably) mythical King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.

As Britain collapsed from Roman authority, Spain followed. The Sueves had made their way directly through Constantine’s Gaul to Hispanic and established a kingdom there, where they contended not with legitimate Roman rule, but another usurper, Maximus. Constantine’s reign began to lose steam, as his rebellious legions abandoned him in favor of yet another Gallic usurper, Jovinus. Stilicho’s successor as generalissimo was a man named Constantius, who restored a semblance of order; Maximus of Spain was defeated, as was Jovinus in 413. Despite some stability returning after 413, the chaos surrounding the four years of Constantine’s rule were a mortal blow to Roman power in Gaul. The empire’s next great shock came when the Vandals invaded Africa in 429, later to establish a kingdom at Carthage.

Above: Siliqua of Maximus of Spain, minted at Barcelona. No gold coins of Maximus survive, and his silver issues are extremely rare, far more so than Constantine III. The remarkably crude style and lettering are a metaphor for the chaos surrounding his brief attempt at power.