00:00was new. Aurelian himself had opened it, one of the mints he established to pay an army that was
00:06holding the empire together by force of will. Coins from Surdica are rare enough that coin
00:12specialists still study their marks. To find one in a grave, 1700 years later, is to hold a piece
00:19of metal that may have passed through a soldier's pay chest on its way to a family in Thrace.
00:24Aurelian, the soldier emperor who ruled from 270 to 275 AD, just five years, and in that time
00:33reunited an empire that had split into three pieces. History calls him the restorer of the world.
