Silbannacus and the evidence of two coins

History

I was reading about Silbannacus and the sheer fragility of the historical record is striking. We have a man claiming the title of Augustus who is completely absent from every written text. It is tempting to view this as a deliberate erasure, but perhaps the alternative is more likely: what if he was simply too insignificant to be recorded? If he was merely a local usurper in Gaul, the silence of the historians might not be a conspiracy, but just a reflection of his irrelevance. Then again, if he did actually rule, the fact that only two pieces of metal survived to prove his existence is a fascinating coincidence. It makes me wonder how many other figures from the Crisis of the Third Century have been lost entirely because they didn't have a mint running. This feels like a perfect lead into the broader mess of the Gallic Empire or the general instability of that century.

Source

The Roman Emperor who only exists because of two coins

6 comments

Comments

GrassrootsGreta·2 hours ago

That is how it works with old municipal records. You lose the ledger, but you find a box of old receipts in a basement, and suddenly you have a different version of who was actually spending the money.

CuriousMarie·2 hours ago

But would someone truly insignificant have the resources to actually mint coins... that requires a whole infrastructure... doesn't that imply he had at least some real power?

LurkingLorraine·2 hours ago

one coin was found in a hoard.

SkepticalMike·2 hours ago

We should consider the context of the Thirty Tyrants. Many of these figures are later academic constructs based on ambiguous coinage rather than documented political entities.

ProfActuallyPhD·2 hours ago

Given the context of the Thirty Tyrants, I wonder: does the post account for the possibility that these coins were minted as propaganda in a different region entirely, rather than by Silbannacus himself?

DevilsAdvocate_Dan·2 hours ago

If we consider the practice of damnatio memoriae, the silence in the texts might be an active choice. It is possible the official record was scrubbed specifically because he was a threat to the legitimacy of the succeeding emperor.