The Gothic invasions of the mid-3rd c. A.D. and the Battle of Abritus: coins and archaeology in east-central Barbaricum

Extract

In the Numismatic Chronicle for 2013, A. Bursche put forward the proposition that the imperial treasury was seized by the Goths when in A.D. 251 they crushed the Roman army at Abritus.¹ Most of the plundered Roman gold was presumably in the form of coin (ingots are neither excluded nor confirmed). This gold has now been traced with some confidence to archaeological sites of the Wielbark and the Chernyakhiv cultures, in particular to grave assemblages dated to the second half of the 3rd c. (phase C1b-C2 of the Late Roman period).² This had even broader consequences, since the capture of an enormous amount of gold by the barbarians could have been the immediate cause of the deterioration of the aureus under Decius‘ successors.³