Mr. Freeman (Norman Conquest, 1867, i. 153; 1877, i. 139) well points out that Carausius, Maximus, and the other so-called tyrants or provincial emperors, did not claim any independent existence for any part of the empire of which they might have gained possession. ‘They were pretenders to the whole empire if they could get it, and they not uncommonly did get it in the end.’ ‘Carausius, the first British emperor, according to this theory, held not only Britain but part of Gaul.’ ‘Britain and part of Gaul were simply those parts of the empire of which Carausius, a candidate for the whole empire, had been able actually to possess himself. At last Carausius was accepted as a colleague by Diocletian and Maximian, and so became a lawful Cæsar and Augustus.’ ‘Allectus was less fortunate; he never got beyond Britain, and, instead of being acknowledged as a colleague, he was defeated and slain by Constantius.’
Although Carausius ruled in Britain from 287 to 293, no lapidary inscriptions or other monuments of his reign have at present been discovered, with the exception of the gold, silver, and copper coins which he issued in large numbers. The testimony of these coins confirms, and in some points supplements, the scanty information derived from the literary sources. Gibbon, in a note in the ‘Decline and Fall,’ observes that ‘as a great number of medals (i.e. coins) of Carausius are still preserved, he is become a very favourite object of antiquarian curiosity, and every circumstance of his life and actions has been investigated with sagacious accuracy.’ However, until the latter part of the present century the coins of Carausius were always considered by numismatists as rarities, and Gibbon had only before him the learned but fanciful work of Dr. Stukeley—possibly also that of Genebrier—who made Carausius a Welshman and gave him for a wife a lady named Oriuna—a name which he arrived at by misreading the word Fortuna on one of the emperor's coins. Even now, no complete list of the coins of Carausius brought down to the present date is in existence, though a very large number may be found engraved in the ‘Monumenta Historica Britannica’ and in Roach Smith's ‘Collectanea Antiqua.’ Cohen, in his ‘Médailles impériales’ (first edition), gives a description of six varieties in gold, forty-six in silver, and 242 in copper; but since this list was compiled, about 1861, numerous additional specimens have been discovered, especially in copper. In particular, the very large hoard of coins unearthed by Lord Selborne in 1873 at Blackmoor in Hampshire contained 545 coins of Carausius, which included 117 varieties not described by Cohen. Among the numerous localities where coins of Carausius have been discovered may be mentioned London (some of the coins were found in the bed of the Thames); Richborough; Rouen (where a hoard of late third-century coins, discovered in 1846, contained 210 of Carausius); St. Albans, Silchester, Strood, Wroxeter, and different parts of Gloucestershire. Carausius struck his money at London, and at a mint indicated by the letter ‘C,’ probably Camulodunum (Colchester); a number of his coins give no indication of their place of mintage. Rutupiæ and Clausentum have by some been suggested as mints; but this is doubtful. De Salis (Num. Chron. n. s. vii. 57) would assign to 287–90? those coins of Carausius which are ‘without mint-marks and mostly of inferior workmanship;’ and to the years 290?–3 the gold and copper coins with the mint-mark of London, and the copper with the mint-mark of Camulodunum: the ‘silver coins with the exergual mark rsr probably belong to this period and to the mint of London.’ It is not improbable that Carausius struck coins with his name and titles even before setting out from Boulogne for Britain. There are two sets of coins which some writers have proposed to attribute to this period: (1) a series (from the Rouen find) bearing a portrait of Carausius differing from that on the coins undoubtedly struck in Britain, and (2) a number of specimens (from the Blackmoor and Silchester hoards) which are restruck on money of previous emperors (Gallienus, Victorinus, Tetricus, &c.). Not having a supply of metal ‘blanks’ ready to hand at Boulogne, Carausius may very well have adopted the expedient of using the copper coins which he found already in circulation, stamping them over again from dies engraved with his own devices and inscriptions. The coins of Carausius as a whole are fairly well executed for the period, though some of the legends are blundered; they hardly, however, warrant the assertion of Gibbon that their issuer ‘invited from the continent a great number of skilful artists.’ The legend of the obverse is almost invariably imp. [or imp. c.] Caravsivs p. f. avg. In rare instances i or in—probably for ‘Invictus’—is added. ‘Carausius’ may, from the evidence of the coins, be considered as the true form of the emperor's name; the author of the Epitome of the ‘De Cæsaribus’ of Victor calls him ‘Charausio,’ and in mediæval and other writers he is given such curious names as ‘Caratius,’ ‘Crausius,’ &c. (see a list of these in Genebrier, pp. 5, 6). Nearly all modern writers—Stukeley; Pauly, ‘Real-Encyclop.;’
