The Ostrogoths lacked both the infrastructure and the ideological mandate to strike large bronze denominations from scratch, so they did the practical thing: they raided existing Roman coinage. Sestertii of the first-century emperors were still circulating in Italy in quantity, and countermarking them with a value designation — here 83 nummi — allowed Theoderic and his successors to integrate old imperial bronze into a functioning Ostrogothic monetary system without new production. The arrangement was politically useful too, preserving the face of a Roman emperor while asserting Gothic administrative control over valuation.
The 83-nummi denomination is an odd figure that has never been fully explained to scholarly consensus.
The Ostrogoths lacked both the infrastructure and the ideological mandate to strike large bronze denominations from scratch, so they did the practical thing: they raided existing Roman coinage. Sestertii of the first-century emperors were still circulating in Italy in quantity, and countermarking them with a value designation — here 83 nummi — allowed Theoderic and his successors to integrate old imperial bronze into a functioning Ostrogothic monetary system without new production. The arrangement was politically useful too, preserving the face of a Roman emperor while asserting Gothic administrative control over valuation.
The 83-nummi denomination is an odd figure that has never been fully explained to scholarly consensus.