Quinarius - Constantius I as Caesar PRINCIPI IVVENTVT

The quinarius denomination had been largely dormant for centuries before Diocletian's reforms prompted experimental silver issues in the 280s and early 290s. This piece belongs to a narrow window of production under Constantius while he held the rank of Caesar in Diocletian's newly constructed Tetrarchy — a political arrangement formalized in 293 AD that divided imperial authority between two Augusti and two Caesars. The PRINCIPI IVVENTVT legend was a standard honorific for junior co-rulers, borrowed wholesale from earlier imperial practice going back to the Julio-Claudians.

RIC V.2 668a is a scarce type; the quinarius format itself was an odd survival in this period and saw no sustained revival.