124 Roman Silver Coins from Gravely Wood, Wilts. 



Somerset. Outside that county the hoards are distributed as 

 follows : one in Worcestershire, one in Berks, two in Hants, the 

 present one in Wilts, two in Norfolk, and one from Coleraine in 

 Ireland. 



The Somerset hoards will be found described by Mr. Haverfield, 

 in the volume already mentioned (pp. 355 ff.). They come from 

 (1) a spot on the Great Western Eailway, between Bath and 

 Bristol ; (2) Uphill, near Weston ; (3) a spot near Bristol or 

 Mendip, not revealed ; (4) East Harptree ; (5) Wookey Hole ; 

 (6) the marshes near Edington and Chilton ; (7) Holway, a suburb 

 of Taunton ; (8) North Curry, near Taunton ; (9) Charlton Mackrel. 

 They all seem to have been buried or lost towards the close of 

 the fourth century. Occasionally, coins of an earlier date than 

 Constantius II are present : but the majority of the coins are of 

 Constantius II, Julian, and their successors down to Honorius 

 and Arcadius. The Western mints. Trier, Lyon, and Aries, are 

 represented in overwhelming preponderance ; but practically all 

 the mints of the Empire furnish stray coins to one or other of the 

 hoards. 



Outside the British Isles, the only instance pretending to the 

 name of a hoard of silver coins of this period is involved in some 

 mystery. Missong published, in 1868,^ a list of 105 siliquae, sup- 

 posed to be part of a hoard from some unknown place, probably 

 in the region of the Lower Danube. He acquired them from a 

 dealer, who declined to communicate further details. But as the 

 Eastern mints, especially Constantinople, were strongly repre- 

 sented, we may assume that the coins came from the Lower 

 Danube district, in various places in which the dealer plied his 

 trade. The odd feature of this " hoard " is that it consists entirely 

 of VOTIS coins.2 



' A. Missong, Fund romischer Siliquen aus den Jahren 360 — 367 ». Chr. 

 Geb. in the Wiener Numismatische Monatshefte, 1868. 



- That is, of types similar to our A, B, B-, etc. Missong considers this to 

 be merely due to chance, and not to a deliberate choice on the part of the 

 person who deposited the hoard. It is true that other hoards show a tendency 

 on the part of certain types to predominate. 



