. This may have been tariffed at 2 denarii but only contained 1 ½ times the weight of silver as the denarii. Naturally, the army saw this (rightly) as a de-valuation and wanted a pay rise! The rest of the population must have felt the same and a damaging inflationary cycle started (although we should be careful not to associate this too closely with our modern concept of inflation). A handful of hoards with old good silver coins survive this hiatus which had perhaps become too valuable to spend at face value. Most of the good silver, though, must have found it's way to the mint to be made into more and more de-based Antoniniani.
After Severus, who died in 211, down to Gallienus, who came to power in 253, there are very few hoards (at least the ones under review) containing coins of the intermediate emperors. This is hardly surprising, as emperors were changing almost monthly, usurpers were popping up all over the place and the coinage was in free-fall. Gresham's Law came into play, with 'bad money driving out good money'.
A couple of hoards include older silver coins, from back to the time of Septimius Severus, but most are bunched around the Gallic Empire period. Nearly all include coins of Gallienus (253-268), as well as all the Gallic emperors. Why were they hoarded? Well, they may not have been worth very much but they were the only coins in circulation, with no pure silver coins and only scarce gold ones for the seriously rich. Inflation must have increased the number of coins required even for daily transactions, so carrying the family fortune around was probably out of the question.
Under Claudius II (268-270), the legitimate Roman coinage reached the same low point as the Gallic coinage, although, interestingly, his coins feature strongly in British hoards, even though, in theory, the empires were separate. However, after his victory over the Tetricii, Aurelian (270-275) reformed the coinage, issuing better made silver-washed coins. At this stage another break-point is reached in the British hoard record.
Just as things got back to normal after the finish of the Gallic Empire, another usurper appeared. This was Carausius, who was emperor in Britain and northern Gaul from 287 to 293, followed by his scheming finance minister, Allectus, who was defeated in 296 by Constantius I. For the first time Roman mints were opened in Britain. In 295 or 296, Diocletian reformed the coinage, once again, with a large silver-washed bronze coin, the Follis and a new silver coin, called the Argenteus.
Most previously discovered hoards of this period, have been separate hoards of either 'legitimate' coins or local radiates, a typical example being the Prestwood 'B' hoard (Table 3, C256), which contains only coins of Diocletian and his fellow Tetrarchs and coins of the Constantinian period. However, the Rogiet hoard (Table 2, C306) and the Langtoft 'A' hoard (Table 2, C255), are fairly atypical, in that they contain not only 'reformed' coins of the Aurelianic and Diocletianic period, but also de-based radiates of the Gallic emperors and the British usurpers, Carausius and Allectus. As a result of these finds, opinion is shifting to the view that, rather than being de-monetised or simply dumped, the old radiates circulated alongside the legitimate coinage, perhaps as a different denomination.
The situation is further confused by the appearance of 'Barbarous Radiates', which start around the time of the Gallic Emperors. These were once thought to have been made by invading 'barbarians' but are now known to have been locally produced in Britain and Gaul. They are often of crude design and are sometimes much smaller than the already small official radiates. They may have been made for local use with the crude designs intended to avoid prosecution for forgery.
The Follis introduced by Diocletian lasted only until around 318, when it had been reduced to the size of the old de-based radiates. The hoards from now on (first half of Table 3) almost completely consist of bronze coins of the period of Constantine I and his extensive family (307-