A 1696 year old coin.

Hi guys, long time no see....and I'm sorry for that.
But today I wanna talk about a coin I have. It's a coin my sister gave to me a long time ago because I collect coins.

So after HARD research (said he sarcastically) I found out where it originated, under which ruler and obviously when it originated.

The coin looks like this

Front

Back

Both photos taken with a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge

Here is a picture of how it looked back then :

Source: https://www.beastcoins.com/RomanImperial/VII/Aquileia/Aquileia.htm

and as you can see it is not in pristine condition but hey that happens when you find a 17 centuries old coin on a beach.
But after some searching I found to which emperor it belonged and what the words and letters on it mean.

Referring to the red markings it reads : DN Constantini Max Aug -which doesn't mean much to us by itself but after some inspection I found out i means : Dominus Noster Constantini Maximus Augusti - which translates roughly to - Our Lord Constantine the Great, Emperor.

After realizing that I wanted to know what the markings in the blue circle meant. I found a forum user explaining what it means and I'm quoting "VOT type coins are vota (not votive, as many people erroneously call them) and represent vows taken by the emperor to successfully rule for a certain number of years. Sometimes they represent having just completed a number and sometimes they represent hopefully completing a term." (a link to the forum will be listed down below.)

So knowing what both of those meant I now knew around what time it originated and under whose rule.
Now it was time to figure out what the green marking meant : the AQP letters.
Looking across the internet i found out it just marks where the coin originated from and for this specific coin it means it originated from Aquileia, Italy. Ill leave a link down below where I found it out if you're willing to read up.

So yeah knowing all that I wanted to learn about Constantine the Great and after some reading I found out he was quite a deal for the world today. I will include a link to his biography . But here is his biggest contribution to the worlds culture today. Constantine I was a Roman emperor who ruled early in the 4th century. He was the first Christian emperor and saw the empire begin to become a Christian state.

Raphael's The Baptism of Constantine depicts Sylvester I instead of Arian bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, Constantine's actual baptizer.
(Taken from the Wikipedia page)

So yeah that little coin was a gateway to a history lesson for me and hopefully for you.
Thank you for reading and till next time.

Sources:

https://www.beastcoins.com/RomanImperial/VII/Aquileia/Aquileia.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_the_Great_and_Christianity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_the_Great

https://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=Mint%20Marks

https://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=Aquileia

http://www.ancients.info/forums/archive/index.php?t-565.html

http://www.biography.com/people/constantine-i-39496