International Treasure Mary Beard article about "Newly Discovered Roman Emperor"

[DFW]

2. I can understand the skepticism.

The enlargement of the coin shows the "scratches" to appear raised, i.e. in the die that struck them, and not from circulation. Also, they stop at raised figures (letters, e.g.) and start again after them, indicating that the letters were punched or carved into the die AFTER the die scratches were on there. There could still be arguments for this coin to be a genuine 3rd century item, but there are at least as many arguments against it.

As for Dacia's isolation from the rest of the Roman empire, this is indeed well documented. It is one of the reasons that Romanian, while a "Latin" language, is so far removed from the rest of them as to be unintelligible for native speakers of the western Latin languages, such as Portuguese, Catalan, Italisn, Spanish and French. Today's Romania encompasses what was Dacia--check out the brand name of their locally made cars.

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