Minted at just the moment when the classical age was giving way to the Christian one, this coin bears the proud image of the emperor Constantius II. As a son and successor of Constantine the great, Constantius was among the first roman rulers brought up in the church. The people who first held this coin might have been Christian, Jewish, or Pagan. Perhaps they were a senator, a scholar, or a soldier, a noble or a commoner. These things we can never know for certain, though the glow of ancient hands radiates from the coin as distinctly as the patina on the bronze. Like a ticket on a time machine, it sets the imagination on wondrous journeys to a distant world.