A hoard of 175 silver coins unearthed in a forest in Italy may have been buried for safe keeping during a Roman civil war.

The coins seem to date from 82 B.C., the year the Roman general Lucius Cornelius Sulla fought a bloody war across Italy against his enemies among the leaders of the Roman Republic, which resulted in Sulla's victory and his ascension as dictator of the Roman state.

The archaeologists who investigated the hoard of 175 silver Roman denarii - the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars in today's money - suggested it may have been buried by a Roman soldier who was then killed in battle.

The chronologies of such coin hoards show that many were buried during wars and upheavals. "A number of people at times of crisis buried their stash of money and for whatever reason were prevented from retrieving it," Santangelo said.

Researchers discovered the coin hoard buried in a terracotta pot in 2021 but kept it secret so that the site could be completely investigated.

Lorella Alderighi, an archaeologist with the provincial office for archaeology, told Live Science the coins were discovered by a member of an archaeological group in a newly-cut area of forest northeast of the city of Livorno in Tuscany. Archaeological investigations revealed the earliest coins dated from 157 or 156 B.C., while the most recent were from 83 or 82 B.C., she said.

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