Antoninianus - Tetricus I Barbarous Radiate

Barbarous radiates are among the most misunderstood coins in the Western Roman series — not crude fakes, but locally produced emergency coinage filling a vacuum left when legitimate Gallic Empire issues dried up or failed to reach outlying regions. Production was almost certainly decentralized, with small workshops, possibly civilian rather than military, copying whatever Tetricus I coins were at hand. The further removed from the prototype, the more abstract the designs became across successive generations of copying.

Tetricus I abdicated in 274 when Aurelian reunified the empire, but these imitations kept circulating well into the late 270s in Britain and northwestern Gaul.