Gold 1/4 Stater Inverted Arcs

The Atrebates were among the tribes that had direct contact with Caesar's Gallic campaigns — Commius, their king, served as Caesar's envoy to Britain before the 55 BC invasion and later defected, eventually fleeing to Britain himself around 50 BC. These quarter staters circulated precisely during that period of political turbulence, when cross-Channel relationships between Belgic Gaul and southern Britain were fracturing under Roman pressure. The "inverted arcs" type is a late devolved derivative of the Gallo-Belgic abstract coinage tradition, produced in small flans that required careful striking to center the design.