Carausius and Allectus. The British Usurpers by P. J. Casey (review)

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 159 P.J. CASEY. Carausius and Alledus. The British Usurpers. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1995. Pp. 213. US $27.50. ISBN: 0-300-06062-9. The career of Marcus Aurelius Carausius can be summarized easily. A native of Gallia Belgiea. he was placed by Maxirnian in command of Roman naval forces on the Channel in the late third century. At some point in the 280s he rebelIed and seized power in Britain. Little is known of his activities there, apart from the prolifie minting of coins. on some of whieh he identified hirnself as the colleague of the legitimate rulers. By at least the end of his reign he controlled territory in northwestern Gaul. and an attempt by Maximian to dislodge hirn led initially to disaster for the legal government but eventually (in 293) to the recovery of Boulogne. Afterwards. in circumstances unknown to uso he was murdered by his second-in-command. Allectus. Carausius might seem an unlikely subject for a biography-he merits less than a page in RE-and serious analysis of his brief career is hampered by the familiar complexities of the third century. There is a general absence of detailed and reliable literary information. a problem compounded by the dearth of inscriptions. The nurnismatic evidence is copious. but also highly complicated and not generally understood . Against this unpromising background. John Casey has undertaken the first major study of Carausius and his even more enigmatie successor . Allectus. and the results will be of value not only to the RomanoBritish specialist but to anyone with a serious interest in the ancient world. Using Carausius as his focus. Casey provides for the nonspecialist an intelligible survey of the confused events of the third century . with partieularly useful insights into the relationship between the peripheral provinces and the central core. There is an excellent general chapter on naval warfare in the period. and an enjoyable and informative chapter on the way British antiquarians imaginatively recreated Carausius' life to suit contemporary needs (he has been on occasion an Irishman. a Welshman. a peacemaker among the Piets and Scots, the founder of Britain's great naval tradition). There is a useful appendix of the literary sources for the period. translated by Roger Tomlin. Most irnportantly. however. this publication is a case study in the application of numismaties to a historieal problem. by an expert who has studied the coins of Carausius for over twenty years. The nurnismatie chapters will merit a place on the reading list of any general Roman history syllabus. Casey begins with a familiar crux, the date of the initial revolt. He provides a fresh assessment of the convoluted and self-contradictory 160 BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS literary evidence and correlates it with the numismatic data. The flight to Britain. elaims Casey. was not a hurried event. and he argues. on numismatic evidence. that for aperiod at the outset of his reign (as at the end) Carausius held territory on both sides of the channel. He places the beginnings of the revolt in 286. earlier than the conventional date. suggesting that the initial Gallic phase was neglected by the sources (who accordingly reckon his reign from the point he established hirnself in Britain). The extent of his backing is indicated by the legions honoured on his coinage (no fewer than 7 continental legions. in addition to II Augusta and XX Valeria Victrix in Britain). But Casey warns us against assuming massive numerical support. since legions at this period were much reduced in strength and regularly deployed in vexillations of possibly fewer than 200 men each. Coins of Carausius are varied and plentiful, with a rich range of types. and have the distinction of being the only Roman issues to carry an (adapted) legend from Vergil: expectate veni (echoing Aeneas's greeting of Hector's ghost in Aeneid 2). Five mints have been identified for Carausius. two for Allectus. Distribution places one of the mints (mark PR or R) on the continent. and Casey argues persuasively for Rouen. dating its output to the pre-British phase. as an accession donative. The four other mints are located in Britain. The most controversial (mark C...