OK, twist my
arm... (Sorry about the formatting; I'm
far too lazy to change every line!)
The Other
Side, by Phillip
Davis, from
The Celator,
Vol. 17, No. 4,
January, 2003.
In a previous incarnation, I managed a custom photo lab and digital
retouching studio. This was a few long years ago, in the days of Shima
Seiki
work stations, when retouching was
still expensive art and
magic, before any Joe off the street with PhotoShop and a smidgen of
talent could enable
his dearly departed grandmother to knit demurely
in front of the Eiffel Tower. I used to fantasize about asking one of
our artists to create a transparency of an
Otho sestertius for me as a
joke. I would have sent 8 X 10 glossies of this to various dealers and
publications and created a sensation, as no one in the coin world yet
knew a pixel from Pixodaros. That was then, and we were far too busy
stripping menthol cowboys into blue-green
meadows to indulge my
pipe-dream. Now all the Joes are in fact off the street and at their
computers, madly remaking the world. Images of
ancient coins are just
so much putty in their busy little
hands.
There is, unfortunately, a point to these musings. I recently took a
careful look at a new
Spanish catalogue of
Roman Republican denarii,
Catalogo Monografico de los Denarios de la Republica Romana, by Jose
Fernandez Molina, Manuel Fernandez Carrera, and Xavier
CalicoEstivill. The authors abbreviate this
FFC, and I'll do the same.
FFCis billed as a readily available alternative to the out of print
RomanSilver Coins I, and purports to provide photos of all varieties of
Republican denarii, not merely the main
types. Some of these
illustrations are reproduced from
Crawford, or from an earlier
catalogue by
Calico and
his brother, and many others are picked up
from NAC sales. Quite a few however are of otherwise unpublished
pieces in the authors'
collections, so
FFC seemed to be a useful
addition to a
Republican library.
The book is organized according to Babelon's "unscientific" but
time-honored and easy to use family arrangement, with the addition of
consecutive numbering. I've no objection to this system, which
sometimes reveals significant patterns within the
Republican coinage
which are obscured by modern chronological arrangements. The recurring
elephants of the
Caecilia gens are a dramatic example.
Nor do I mind
the decision, presumably dictated by space and interest, to exclude
bronze, victoriati, and the entire pre-denarius coinage, although a
listing of the
denarius fractions would have been welcome. The photos
themselves are a
bit flat for my taste, but reasonably
sharp and
clear. Prices are given in
Euro, for VF and EF specimens. These are
intriguing, if sometimes open to debate.
I was dismayed however to discover that many of the photos in
FFC have
been doctored, in PhotoShop or something like it, to illustrate
varieties of which the authors could not locate actual coins.
Sometimes the retouching is obvious, and adjacent entries clearly
derive from the same original, a control mark or
legend having been
moved or changed on one photo without other alteration of the coin. In
other instances, a more serious effort has been made to make the
original and the created coin appear different. The size of the
flanis varied, scratches are added or removed, the contrast or density of
the photos modified. To my knowledge, this procedure is without
precedent or parallel in other numismatic works, whether intended for
collectors or scholars. Originally I thought these changes were made
without comment, but a rereading of the prologue shows that the
authors do briefly mention this methodology, saying (a paraphrase of
my
poor translation) "we have permitted ourselves to modify coins in
the few cases where we regrettably can't find originals."
Excluding the two immense and complex
Calpurnia issues,
Crawford 340/1
and 408/1, which the authors understandably do not attempt to
exhaustively illustrate,
FFC contains 929 listings of
Republicandenarii. A quick survey of only the
Republican section of the book
(which also includes
Imperatorial and Augustan
denarii) finds 44
certain examples of modified images, over 4.5% of the total. I'm sure
there are others I missed, and that the real percentage is higher.
Each retouched image implies an unretouched original, but the authors
nowhere indicate which is which, so the unaltered image cannot be
distinguished from the altered one, and both are in doubt. Thus,
almost 10% (or more) of the illustrations are of "coins" which may or
may not have any existence in the real world. One might question
whether this really constitutes only "a few," but more important is
the propriety of the procedure itself.
Putting the best
face on it, this is a very slippery slope. It's one
thing to create an
Otho sestertius as a prank, but
FFC would like to
be accepted as a serious handbook for collectors and a valuable mine
of images for scholars. The possibilities of
fraud are obvious, even
if no
fraud was intended here. That aside, the
work is inherently
dangerous, as it presents a false picture of the
Republican coinage,
which future collectors are likely to assume is accurate. The authors'
technique results in some serious blunders. For example, an apparent
misreading of
Crawford has led the authors to digitally create a
nonexistent variety of
Crawford 363/1, L. Censorinus, with the
legendL.
CENSOR to the right of
Marsyas. They then proceed to number (
FFC889) and describe this fantasy.
FFC 976 seems to be a new variety of
Crawford 405/3, M. Plaetorius M. f. Cestianus, with the variant
reverse legend beginning CESTIAN. S.C. rather than
CEST. EX. S.C. This
is of some interest, if it exists. There's no way to be sure, as
FFC977 repeats the same coin, with control mark removed and banker's mark
added, and the same variant
legend, incorrectly cited as
Crawford405/3a. In another flight of fancy,
FFC 720, they concoct an example
of the very
rare Cr-353/1b, Mn. Fonteius C. f., with both CF and
ROMAmonogram to the right of the
head of
Apollo. This variety is cited by
Crawford from the Cosa
Hoard, and illustrated in the
hoard report by
T. V. Buttrey. The authors however appear never to have seen this
illustration, and simply to have guessed at the location of the
monogram. They place it, grotesquely, at the tip of Apollo's nose, not
under
his chin
as is found on the actual coin. In general, the authors
seem surprisingly unaware of pieces now residing elsewhere than in
their own
collections, even if sold in the NAC
auctions whose
catalogues they utilized, other than a few very
rare items picked up
from
standard works.
The authors' stated goal of providing illustrations of all varieties
is laudable, but to me, their method of achieving it is distasteful,
lazy, and intellectually dishonest. The point of such illustration
should be to allow the discerning reader to confirm patterns of
styleand
fabric distinctive to certain varieties. That is hardly possible
here, where a single coin is repeated as many as five times (
FFC 878,
880-83,) with control marks rearranged or changed as needed. It's
clear that the book is worthless for research (a view confirmed
privately by others for whose opinions I have the utmost respect.) I
believe it's of only minimal value to collectors either, except
perhaps as a curiosity. This is a real shame, as the need for a
single-volume replacement for the invaluable but hard to find
RSC I is
acute. One can only
hope that
FFC is an irresponsible aberration, not
the emergence of a new paradigm for numismatic literature.