Lead Curse on a Roman Emperor

Some 1,650 years ago someone was so comprehensively fed up with the state of the Roman empire that they committed an act of treason, blasphemy and probably criminal defacing of the coinage. They cursed the emperor Valens by hammering a coin with his image into lead, then folding the lead over his face.

The battered scraps of metal discovered by Tom Redmayne, an amateur metal detector, in a muddy field in Lincolnshire are a unique find.

The mid-fourth century was a time of turmoil in Roman Britain. A Roman aristocrat, Valentinus, had been exiled to Britain where he was stirring up trouble. (more…)

, Lead Curse on a Roman Emperor, http://www.coinlink.com/News/ancients/lead-curse-on-a-roman-emperor/, http://feeds.feedburner.com/AncientCoinNews?format=xml, Coin Collecting News » Ancients, ,
Ancient Coin news, 7, ancient-coin-news