Professor Rob Collins

And they might take local troops.

One of the things I would say is, I suppose, negative evidence, is aware that Constantine III isn't taking at least all the soldiers from Northern Britain.

is that when you're a usurper, it's really important that you kind of pay people and keep them on your side, lest the emperor, with his much greater tax revenue, bribes them back to his side.

And so gifts from Constantine III, coins, when he's able to mint coins in his name,

And there's not a lot of coins of Constantine III, but where we find them in Britain tends to be in the south and the Midlands.

They never make it to the north.

And that makes me suspicious that he's not paying anyone in the north.

And therefore, he's not necessarily drawn soldiers or bribed the duke's Britanniarum to give him soldiers or anything like that.

that absence of his admittedly very minor coinage, I think is still very conspicuous.

I think there is.

Interesting, okay.

Not least because Constantine III is rising to power, basically on a tide of British fear of being cut off from the rest of the empire.

Britain is not wanting to leave the Roman Empire.

It's not an early Brexit.

It's trying to avoid a Brexit, in fact.

They want that connection.

And certainly, the elites, the wealthy people, want that connection.

It benefits the villa owners, the governors, to be at the top of the food chain.

And if we think of Comstime III, kind of building off that British desire, at least the British elite desire, to stay as part of the empire,

he would have a real danger, there's a risk, to completely denuding Hadrian's Wall of its troops.