f
Charles the Sixth. Again, though coins are found from Domitian onwards,
it is only with Valerian and Gallienus that they become at all common,
while the great mass belong to Tetricus and his son. One alone is of
Aurelian. That is to say, of 169 coins found in the fortress, 151 come
in the twenty years from 258 to 273, while 110 belong to the single
reign of the Tetrici. After Aurelian there is nothing earlier than
Charles the Bald. It is clear then that the fortress must have been
deserted in the reign of Aurelian; it is clear that the time of its
chief importance must have been just before, in the time of Tetricus. It
looks as if the fortress had had but a very short life. The conclusion of
the local antiquaries is that it was most likely raised by Postumus, and
that it perished in some revolt or sedition, or merely as the result of
the overthrow of Tetricus by Aurelian. A mere glance at the building
would have tempted us to put it a little later, to have set it down as
part of the defences of Probus, or even of some Emperor much later than
Probus. But the numismatic evidence seems irresistible; it seems
impossible to escape the conclusion that this splendid piece of Roman
military work belongs to the middle of the third century, and that it
was forsaken, most likely slighted, within a very few years after its
first building.

This is as curious and conclusive a piece of internal evidence as we
often light upon; but it must be remembered that all this applies only
to the fortress, and not to the town of Naeodunum. That had a much longer
life. It began long before the fortress, and it went on long after. The
diggings at Jublains have brought to light a great number of Christian
Frankish objects, which shows that the place kept on some measure of
importance long after the Teutonic conquest of Gaul. It seems also to be
looked upon as a kind of secondary seat of the Cenomannian bishopric.
But it must either have died out bit by bit, or else have perished in
some later convulsion. The local inquirers seem to incline to attribute
the final destruction of Naeodunum, the City of the Diablintes in the
nomenclature of the time, to the incursions of the Northmen in the ninth
century. That they did a great deal of mischief in Maine is certain; and
is a likely enough time for the city to have been finally swept away as
a city, and to have left only the insignificant modern village which has
grown up amongst its ruins.

Jublains