The finding
Komin is a
small village of 1300 inhabitants in Croatia, at the mouth of the river Neretva
in the Adriatic. Its location corresponds to that of a small Roman settlement
known as Pyrri, in the ancient province of Pannonia, as evidenced by the
discovery of ancient tombs and other inscripted monuments in the region.
It was in
this small village that a century ago, in 1918, the greatest hoard of Roman
coins ever discovered was found by chance. It was found about half a mile from
the local church. It contained more than 300,000 Roman coins! The earliest coins
dated from the reign of Marcus Aurelius and the latest from the reigns of
Aurelian and Tacitus at the end of the III century; however, the vast majority
dated from this later period. Information is very scarce as the composition of
the treasure does not seem to have been accurately recorded by the finders. The
hoard was most likely buried under the short reign of Tacitus (275-6).
The fate of the Komin coins
Most of the
hoard was dispersed and sold to coins and antiquities dealers, but a
significant part of it was deposited in the museum of Zagreb, where it would be
studied in the following decades by a small group of numismatists, among which
the great Andreas Alföldy stood out. Finally, in 1937, a brief study was
published with a list of just under 20,000 coins from the hoard, all
Antoninians minted between 253 and 275 A.D., that is, between the reigns of
Valerian and Aurelian, the vast majority of the pieces apparently coming from
the reign of Gallienus. The list is accompanied by drawings of some selected
coins. The list included only the small part at the disposal of the museum and
this is not a representative selection of the whole, so it is not possible to
reach definite conclusions.
The
photograph accompanying this entry are illustrative only, since it seems than
no photographs were taken at the moment of discovery. The photographs are from
a similar but smaller hoard, that of Dorchester in England.
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