Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE joined in and replied with this 3 years ago, 28 minutes later[^][v]#1,210,533
Yeah I saw this already. It's extremely cool. Numismatics (the study of coins) has allowed us to learn about an Emperor who was missed by the extant written sources (which are admittedly very bad for this period of Rome's history).
I'd encourage you guys to at least skim the article, if you're at all interested in history or archaeology. It's very cool example of how archaeologists can pull a lot of information about a previously unknown historical person from just a few coins.
Killer Lettuce🌹 !HonkUK.BIE double-posted this 3 years ago, 5 minutes later, 33 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,210,534
This isn't even the only instance of this happening, either. There was another Emperor, Silbannacus, who is not at all mentioned in written sources and is only known from just two surviving coins.
History, I think, should be about finding the truth about what happened in the past. Or at least as close as we can reasonably get. These coins should really be subjected to rigorous examination before Sponsian is declared to have been a real guy.