THE ARRANGEMENT OF THE
LONDON MINT BEATA ISSUES IN
RIC VIII have recently been studying these issues and have come across the following apparent discrepancy in
RIC.
The
catalogue of
RIC VII (pages 110-115) gives the following sequence of the BEATA/BEAT issues:
P/A//PLON (BEATA)then
PLON (BEATA) then F/B//PLON (BEAT)and finally
PLON (BEAT)
But the text (page 96) gives the following order:
PLON (BEATA) then P/A//PLON then F/B//PLON and finally
PLON (BEAT)
I haven’t got the references referred to in the notes of the text to check against, but if I haven’t misread anything, this is a significant error and I can’t recall coming across anyone noting this error before. I think that
RIC 199-219 should really be placed between
RIC 237 and
RIC 238 assuming that the text is correct rather than the
catalogue.
If this is correct it would make more sense to me as
RIC 217-219 could then be explained by the crossover from the longer to the shorter
reverse legends unless, of course, they were actually F/B examples that were mis-catalogued.
I asked
Curtis Clay about this issue and he added the following: “I agree: if
RIC 217-219 are correctly reported, they should indicate that P/A//PLON is the last BEATA issue, and therefore follows rather than preceding PLON/BEATA, as Bruun himself states in the introduction.”
He went on to say “I hadn't noticed this discrepancy before, but am sure others must have done so!” I felt that as well but I then checked the reports of the
Cae Bardd and Durrington II
hoards. The discrepancy is not noted in either of those. Has anyone else come across this issue before?
Curtis also said “Offhand I don't see any strong evidence for the correct order of the two issues with BEAT, namely F/B//PLON and
PLON. There is the new
obv. 7a in
PLON, but it's rather
rare so not a strong argument.”
In the
Cae Bardd and Durrington II
hoards there were no examples of the 7a
legend. But they both record the BEAT :dot:TRAN :dot:QLITAS variants for all emperor/sons for the BEAT/PLON issue. None of these variants are recorded for earlier issues. I suspect it should remain F/B//PLON followed by
PLON. I am not sure what Bruun's original evidence was, though.
Finally, for completeness, I think I should repeat an earlier remark by
Curtis about
RIC 215-6:
"
RIC 215-6 are the last listings for the BEATA TRA-NQVILLITAS
type of
RIC 199-216, not a new variant with BEAT only. So the introduction, p. 96, names two versions of this
type only,
BEATA TRANQVILLITAS and
BEAT TRANQLITAS, with no mention of the alleged BEAT TRANQVILLITAS version of
RIC 215-6. The same in Voetter's
Gerin cat., pp. 156-8; no BEAT TRANQVILLITAS, though
RIC 216 with this alleged
legend is stated to be very common (c3)! According to
RIC,
BEATA TRANQVILLITAS does not occur for
Constantine II in this issue, but
Voetter no. 5 indeed lists it for him.
Voetter 5 is clearly the same as
RIC 216, with BEATA not BEAT"
Therefore, simply a
typo, a missing A in
RIC!
Grateful for any comments,
Lee
