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archaeologist have discovered a trove of ancient silver coins " hidden in a hole in the wall " on a Mediterranean island near Sicily , mayhap during a buccaneer attack more than 2,000 year ago .
The coins were minted between 94 and 74 B.C. when the neighborhood was ruled by Rome , a republicat that clock time , according to a Sept. 2 Facebook post by Sicily ’s regional government . Some of the coins limn the profile of a human school principal , which has not yet been identified .
The coins are silver “denarii"minted in Rome more than 2,000 years ago. Some show a profile of an unidentified head.
archaeologist found the ancient treasure trove of 27 coin while excavating the Acropolis of Santa Teresa and San Marco on the island of Pantelleria , about 70 miles ( 110 kilometers ) southwestern United States of Sicily , in the Sicilian Strait bounded by Sicily and Tunisia .
Parts of the ruin are even older than the coin and appointment from the Punic or Carthaginian period , before the Punic Wars between Carthage and Rome in the third and 2d one C B.C.
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Archaeologists found the trove of silver Roman coins at an archaeological site on the island of Pantelleria.
Ancient silver
The stash was discovered by an archeological team lead by Germany ’s University of Tübingen , which has worked at the internet site for 25 long time , according to a translated governmentstatement .
The coins had been minted in Rome and were facile " denarii”,the standard Roman coin for hundreds of yr , the statement say . At this time , a undivided denarius wasequivalent to about $ 20 — around a day ’s pay for a soldier in the Roman host .
Some of the coins were discovered after solid ground from the wall had drop away away play along rainy weather , and the ease were found under a boulder . The hoard was believably cover during one of the frequent pirate attack at this time , University of Tübingen archaeologistThomas Schäfersaid in the command .
plagiarist infested the eastern Mediterranean Sea and often raided coastal liquidation until their defeat in 67 B.C. in a safari waged by the papist general Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus — Pompey the Great — who had jump to prominence as a henchman of the authoritarian Sulla .
Roman ruins
The treasure trove of R.C. coin was found near the location of the heads of three Roman statues that had been discovered at the site a few age to begin with , the command account .
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The marble heads portrayedJulius Caesar ; the Roman emperor Titus , who harness from A.D. 79 to 81 ; and a woman who may have been either Agrippina the Elder ( live from 14 B.C. to A.D. 33 ) , a granddaughter ofAugustus , the first emperor of the Roman Empire , or Antonia the Younger ( lived from 36 B.C. to A.D. 37 ) , a daughter ofMark Antony .
Schäfer allege the Acropolis web site on the island — cry Cossyra or Cossura by the Romans — was untasted by spoiler . It included a " comitium,“or place of fabrication , for the region ’s " decurions " — a name given to the elect representatives of a region , and also to papistical horse cavalry officers .
Only five such comitiahad been let on in all of Italy , and this one was in the best status , he said .
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