As of Emperador Calígula year 37-41 D. of Villafáfila

About 1980 when they were putting the dirty water network in Villafáfila, in a ditch near the church of Santa María del Moral, the neighbor D. Fernando Aparicio found a Roman coin that he kept without further importance, perhaps due to ignorance of what I could assume I had found it.

40 years later, he showed it to the neighbor D. Laureano Alonso Gallego, a great fan and connoisseur of the Roman era, to reach a better guess, he spread the fact through digital media to a group of the WhatsApp town of villafafia.net.

After studying it, making comparisons with what the Internet offers us today, he concluded that this coin was a:

Bronze coin minted in Caesaraugusta (Zaragoza), in the time of Caligula (37 to 41 AD).

Pair of oxen moving to the right, led by a priest who is marking the sacred perimeter in the ceremony of the foundation of the Caesaraugusta city in the image of what happened in his day in the City of Rome.

Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (Latin: Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus ; Anzio, August 31, 12-Rome, January 24, 41), also known as Gaius Caesar or Caligula, was the third Roman emperor, belonging to the dynasty Julio-Claudia, from the year 37 to 41.

He lived and reigned very little, he was assassinated at the age of 29 by his own bodyguard, the Praetorian Guard. After believing himself to be a god during his mere 4 years of absolute power , but troubled reign that alienated both the Roman Army and the Roman Senate, ruthlessly eliminating rivals and critics, and infamously proposing to make his own horse a consul, Gore, sexual scandals, incest and a number of executions – some ordered, others personal – almost incalculable.

Returning to the fact of the appearance of the already cataloged coin, we are well aware of the Roman presence in Villafáfila, among the best known are the Villarigo Bridge, the San Pedro Fountain, the Mosaics of the Villa de San Pedro and the Pasarriendas de Valorio ; but also La Mata, Valorio, El Escambrón, Tierras de Barillos, La Cantera, La Vega in Villafáfila; Church and Las Negras in Otero; Because we are limited only to the area of the lagoons, materials such as tegulae appear , some with potters' marks, bricks, sigillata ceramics and glass or bronze objects.

Such a concentration of settlements, some of them very close to small lagoons, can make us suspect the exploitation of the Salinas in Roman times, as Germán Delibes also points out.

Its settlements the main appeal in Villafáfila was the exploitation of the salt flats for the extraction of salt at this time, perhaps it was linked to the conservation of salted fish from the same lagoons, specifically the river lampreys or lamprehuelas, abundant in them and appreciated by the Romans

According to Delibes, the very name of Villafáfila could be due to the production in the region of the " favilla salis ", very fine salt that Pliny mentions in his Natural History, since the sources also record the use of lodanos and brackish springs from the interior. of Hispania [1] .

Confirmation of this suspicion can come from the transcription and interpretation of the inscription of the fragment of a bronze tabula that possibly appeared in Fuentes de Ropel, made by Marcos Máyer, Rosario García and José Antonio Abásolo. For them it is a question of a delimitation of public fields, " limitatio agrorum ", dating from the first years of our era, shortly after the conquest of these regions was carried out. The mention in the text of some lacunae leads them to conclude that the delimitation would be of some salt flats, which due to the area of the discovery must be those of Villafáfila:

“ Its importance, if the proposed content and dating were accepted, would be very great, since it would inform us about some salt pans, ager publicus par excellence, in the rich Tierra de Campos, thus complementing the existing information on the subject in the Iberian Peninsula.

The salt mines would also gain importance in the interior and would perhaps help to better explain the important military implantation of control of the area, always linked to the exploitation of mines .” [two]

It has already been verified that the Romans were settled in this land of Villafáfila, brought by the salt from the salt pans as the ancient settlers did before. What value or difference does this coin found within the urban area have, since it appeared in the other places mentioned as the area of San Pedro other currencies?

Its clear value is that it is not economical, the payment of this currency is not high.

But if its value of the place found until now had been unheard of within the urban area of the Villa.

Until a tasting was done in the place to see if ceramics were found, above all, to determine if it was faithfully confirmed that there was a Roman villa.

But the main thought of D. Laureano Alonso Gallego, Elías Rodríguez Rodríguez (son and historian of the Villa) and a server, is that it would be indicating a very early Roman settlement, recently conquered the territory in the 1st century AD.

Therefore, this possibility led us to confirm that the area of the urban area of Villafáfila was inhabited at this time. So far no possibility has been found.

Perhaps the closest thing is from the 7th century, when the Tesorillo de Villafáfila appears in the vicinity of the Villa, made up of three crosses cut out in gold foil, an incense burner with a lid fragment and a possible paten handle, made of bronze, this set, found in Villafáfila, it is related to liturgical and religious environments. Its simplicity and modest workmanship is far from the sumptuousness of other similar pieces that characterize Visigoth goldsmithing. 7th century AD

In the year 936 Villafáfila already appears, with his own name, in the sale made by some “pressors” to the Sahagún Monastery:

“Et ego Alarico et uxor mea Fradegundia vendo bobis IIª pausetas in Lamprea cun suis puteis es suos eiratos cun suos 1st .

(And I Alarico and my wife Fradegundia sell to you II salinas, in Lamprea, with its wells and threshing floors, with its borders: Iª Salina to the Laguna Mayor, at the border of Abiza and Piniolo and Villa Fáfila and the border of Atanarico ).

A piece of coin has gone around so many times, cataloging it, where or not it appeared, and above all the conjecture that it has left us, where it has shown us a specific fact that could settle something that perhaps was thought, there was no prop to confirm, this coin stood on edge after almost 2000 years of its existence.

Zamora: Institute of Zamoran Studies "Florián de Ocampo", 2000. ISBN 84-86873-87-8.

Villafáfila: History and current situation of a Castilian-Leonese village and its parish churches. 1996 p. 39.

https://www.infobae.com/america/mundo/2018/02/25/delirio-locura-y-crimenes-de-caligula-el-mas-cruel-de-los-emperadores-romanos/

https://historia.nationalgeographic.com.es/a/caligula-cesar-que-todo-estaba-permitido_9278/2

https://www.imperio-numismatico.com/gallery/Coins-Romanas-Imperiales/CALIGULA/As-de-Caligula-Caesar-Augusta-pic_627.htm

All text, photographs, transcription and montage, their rights belong to their authors, any type of use is prohibited without authorization.

[1] Strabo, II.2, 6; quoted by Delibes, 1993.

[2] The article has been kindly provided to me by Rosario García Rozas before its publication, so that I can use her study for this work.

[3] AHN. Calf of Sahagun fols. 45v-46r. Jose Minguez Fernandez. Diplomatic Collection of the Monastery of Sahagún doc. 36.