This success, and his former occupation as a pilot, led to his appointment to command the Classis Britannica, a fleet based in the English Channel, with the responsibility of eliminating Frankish and Saxon pirates who had been raiding the coasts of Armorica and Belgica.

[3] British historian and archaeologist Sheppard Frere wonders how Carausius was able to win support from the army when his command had been sea-based, and speculates that he had perhaps been involved in an unrecorded victory in Britain, connected with Diocletian's assumption of the title Britannicus Maximus in 285, and signs of destruction in Romano-British towns at this time.

He issued the first proper silver coins that had appeared in the Roman Empire for generations, knowing that good quality bullion coinage would enhance his legitimacy and make him look more successful than Diocletian and Maximian.

[9] Carausius also had himself depicted as a member of the Tetrarchy's college of emperors, issuing coins with the legend CARAVSIVS ET FRATRES SVI, 'Carausius and his brothers' with portraits of himself with Diocletian and Maximian.

Some of these silver coins bear the legend Expectate veni, "Come long-awaited one", recognised to allude to a messianic line in the Aeneid by the Augustan poet Virgil, written more than 300 years previously.

[12][13][14] Since 1998 these letters have been recognised as representing the sixth and seventh lines of the Fourth Eclogue of Virgil, which reads Redeunt Saturnia Regna, Iam Nova Progenies Caelo Demittitur Alto, meaning "The Golden Ages are back, now a new generation is let down from Heaven above".

[15] Cassius Dio cites an instance of a praetorian tribune quoting Virgil as a means of criticising Septimius Severus after an attack on Hatra went badly in 199.

[18] Another depicts Numerian in consular garb and on the reverse himself and his father Carus in a quadriga pulled by Victory with the legend TRIVNF.QVADOR, 'the triumph over the Quadi tribe', and is clearly similar in tone to the Carausian INPCDA medallion.

[21] An imperial panegyric to Maximian states 'Indeed, as the fact is, those golden ages which once flourished briefly in the reign of Saturn, are now reborn under the perpetual guidance of Jove and Hercules.

An alternative school of thought exists which argues the medallions must be eighteenth-century fantasy pieces on the basis that such arcane literary allusions would have been too obscure to Carausius and his army.

[25] However, this published argument does not offer any evidence to support Stukeley's involvement or motives (since Stukeley never mentions the medals or a Virgilian expansion of the RSR coins known to him), or include discussion of the literary evidence of the contemporary panegyrics or any of the scholarly publications concerning them, or explain why the medallions appear on the basis of their present appearance to have been buried and why they were unknown until 1931 when the INPCDA one was first brought to the British Museum.

[26] The inscription reads (with expansions in square brackets) "IMP[eratori] C[aesari] M[arco] | AVR[elio] MAVS[aeo] | CARAVSIO P[io] F[elici] | INVICTO AVG[usto]", this translates as "For the Emperor Caesar Marcus Aurelius Mausaeus Carausius Pius Felix Invictus Augustus".

This find roughly equates to four years' pay for a Roman legionary, but the presence of later coin issues implies that the group was not deposited until after Carausius's death.

Carausius features as the character 'Caros' in James Macpherson's Fingal, An Epic Poem in Six Books (1761), in which he is defeated by the blind poet Ossian's son, Oscar.