MOESIA INFERIOR, MARCIANOPOLIS, Philip II, 247-249 AD, bronze, pentassarion, year 5 of Philip I (249 AD)

DescriptionMoesia was a region spread over southern Romania, Kosovo, and Serbia, and northern North Macedonia and Bulgaria. The Romans conquered the region during the late Republic, to protect their holdings in Macedonia to the south. That was their operating principle: extend their territories to protect what they already had. Like all other attempts at world conquest, it failed due to lack of resources. In Moesia, during the 3rd century AD, a number of cities issued large, well made bronze coins.Marcianopolis is now the Bulgarian town of Devnya. Philip II was son of Philip I (the Arab), who was constantly fighting during his reign. At age 7 the son was made “Caesar,” the name of the famous dictator had been made into an administrative title meaning “junior emper. He was named co-Emperor at age 12. Of course he didn’t “do” anything other than follow his father around. Dad took him off to war and they both died, or maybe Philip II made it back to Rome and was assassinated by the Praetorian (palace) Guards.The Romans, as they were building their empire, preferred to let the local coinage arrangements remain in place. As they developed their political system into the Cult of Personality that was the Empire, they started putting imperial portraits on the local coins. Later, as the Empire began to shrink, they preferred to centralize their coinage operations, eliminating local control. There were also allied and client states, some of which, at times, issued coins celebrating the alliance or subservience.This category includes Greek and Roman coins and those of neighbors and successors, geographically from Morocco and Spain all the way to Afghanistan. Date ranges for these begin with the world’s earliest coins of the 8th century BC to, in an extreme case, the end of Byzantine Empire, 1453 AD.