Imagine finding 934 Roman silver coins buried in a field.
That's exactly what happened near Wesseling in western Germany, where archaeologists recovered a major Roman hoard dating to the reign of Emperor Hadrian.
The LVR estimates that an ordinary Roman legionary earned around 300 denarii per year, with roughly half deducted for food and equipment. That means a legionary would have needed approximately six years of saving all his disposable income to accumulate a fortune comparable to this hoard.
Who buried the money?
Why was it never recovered?
The answers remain unknown—but the coins give us an unusual glimpse into the economics of Roman military life.
