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Author Topic: BMC vs. RIC for the coins of Augustus to Balbinus and Pupienus  (Read 3145 times)

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Offline curtislclay

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BMC vs. RIC for the coins of Augustus to Balbinus and Pupienus
« on: January 12, 2010, 04:42:10 am »
I have been trying to persuade Frans Diederik to acquire the Antonine volume of BMC; now he writes that he has ordered it and it is underway to him!

Here my comments on 10 Dec. 2009 in a thread about IDing an Antonine sestertius in his collection:

"I strongly recommend that, with your A. Pius specialty, you get yourself a copy of BMC IV!  It is five times better than the corresponding RIC, chiefly because (a) directly based on an excellent collection, giving you the presumption that any coins described as being in BM actually exist and don't have to be confirmed elsewhere; (b) far more completely illustrated than RIC.

"I myself really haven't used my Antonine RIC volume since acquiring a copy of BMC IV soon after it was reprinted in 1968; the BMC volume is so superior that for me it completely supersedes RIC. I still frequently consult Cohen, however, for he is a good original source for the contents of the Paris collection, which he was mainly describing; and his prices in French francs are a good index for the relative rarity plus desirability of the different types."
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Offline curtislclay

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Re: BMC vs. RIC for the coins of Augustus to Balbinus and Pupienus
« Reply #1 on: January 12, 2010, 04:48:23 am »
I wanted to add the following comments upon hearing that Frans has ordered the book; but I decided to put them in a separate thread since they might be of general interest to collectors trying to decide which reference to buy.

Frans,

Congratulations on your forthcoming graduation to BMC!

I have praised the many advantages of BMC, now let me mention one disadvantage, to cushion your disappointment when you discover it yourself!

Mattingly, reacting to Cohen's arrangement by emperor in the first place, then by rev. type in alphabetical order, decided that it would be "scientific" to arrange the coins of a particular reign first by mint, then by metal, the whole gold and silver coinage preceding the whole bronze coinage, but then, within the groups so defined, in as close to chronological order as possible, integrating the coinages of all members of the imperial family.

Thus under Pius, gold and silver, 140-144 AD, first the coins of Pius COS III, then those of Marcus Caesar COS; late 144, Pius COS DES IIII followed by Marcus COS DES II; 145-7, Pius COS IIII followed by Marcus COS II; 148, Pius TR P XI followed by Marcus TR P; and so on. Then after the gold and silver coinage of the whole reign, the bronze coinage in the same integrated order.

The coinages of the ladies, which could not be dated year by year, were inserted as a group under the year when they began: so Diva Faustina I, her entire coinage inserted close to 141 when she died; Faustina II under Pius, inserted in 147 when she became Augusta. This is the rule, but occasionally Mattingly was inconsistent and gathered a lady's coinage at the end of the relevant reign, rather than in the course of the reign when it began. That is actually the case with Faustina II's coinage under Pius, though her coinage under Marcus is placed as usual, at the end of 161 AD when it began.

Mattingly's idea has been extremely influential. Later cataloguers have almost all followed him and have gone even further in the same direction, for example integrating rather than separating the precious metal coins with the bronze coins, in BMC VI (Sev. Alex. to Balbinus and Pupienus) and in the new Flavian RIC.

During my decades of researching and collecting Roman coins, however, it has gradually become clear to me that this route is a mistake! It helps you not one whit with your understanding of the chronology, for example, to have the entire coinage of Diva Faustina I inserted in the middle of the coinages of Pius and Marcus near 141 AD. Rather,

1. If you have a coin of Diva Faustina and want to look it up, but have forgotten exactly when she died, you will have difficulty finding her coins in the catalogue and may have to consult the table of contents or the index.

2. Say you have a coin of Pius on which you can't quite read the date; you don't find it under COS III, so want to check COS IIII. How annoying that between COS III and COS IIII there are suddenly thirty pages of coins of Marcus Caesar and then Diva Faustina I, which you will have to flip past to continue your search!

So, I think BMC has introduced considerable inconvenience for readers, without providing much of the hoped-for compensation of making the coinage more understandable by presenting it more nearly in the chronological order of its production. In my opinion RIC here has a clear advantage, because it separates not only the metals, but also the coinages for different personages within the same reign. So for Pius, first his gold and silver coinage in chronological order from his accession until his death, then Faustina I both alive and consecrated, then the gold and silver coins of Marcus Caesar in chronological order, finally Faustina II in the order dictated by her changing obv. legends and hairdos (ideally; in the existing RIC her coins under Pius are all jumbled into a single alphabetical list with codes for the different obv. legends). Then the bronze coinage in the same order. Not only is this order much simpler to navigate and use, but it makes the succession of obv. legends, portraits, and reverse types for each personage much easier to understand and investigate. The place for a chronological integration of these various coinages is not here in the catalogue, but in the introduction and commentary, with the aid of tables which summarize the type sequences and the volumes of production of the coinages for the different personages!

Curtis Clay

Offline silvernut

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Re: BMC vs. RIC for the coins of Augustus to Balbinus and Pupienus
« Reply #2 on: January 12, 2010, 05:32:30 am »
Thank you for a very clarifying comment on both books. I am thinking of buying BMC V to complement RIC for Caracalla. Do you think BMC is also superior to RIC for Severan coinage?

Regards,
Ignasi

Offline maridvnvm

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Re: BMC vs. RIC for the coins of Augustus to Balbinus and Pupienus
« Reply #3 on: January 12, 2010, 06:16:35 am »
I use BMC V, RIC, RSC and Cohen in that order for my Severans. I am still not familiar enough with my BMC to be able to simply dip in and out as I can in RIC but I have been using RIC for longer. BMC is much better than RIC for Severans in my opinion. I actually went and bought the whole set of BMC even though the other volumes aren't a direct focus area as I occasionally dip into collecting on those other areas. I have found it worth having the full set and would certainly recommend volume V for anyone interested in the Severan period.
Regards,
Martin

Offline moonmoth

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Re: BMC vs. RIC for the coins of Augustus to Balbinus and Pupienus
« Reply #4 on: January 12, 2010, 05:58:17 pm »
I don't really specialise in anything, and I nevertheless have one volume of BMC, Vol. V, Pertinax to Elagabalus.  That's because I have more Severan silvers than most other types of coin.  It is really very good, with detailed descriptions and lots of illustrations. I also have RIC IV.

I started out with Sear's 2002 volume. In fact I still use this to give references for the benefit of people who don't have RIC or the BM catalogue; and for many types, it actually acts as a handy index into both RIC (not just vol IV) and the BMC.  Though really, you learn more by looking the coins up properly in those books, especially if you can find them without using the indexes, working from the sequence of legends and types.

BMCRE vol V is quite expensive, though.

Bill
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Offline curtislclay

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Re: BMC vs. RIC for the coins of Augustus to Balbinus and Pupienus
« Reply #5 on: January 13, 2010, 02:58:08 am »
Ignasi,

Yes, BMC V has the same advantages over the corresponding RIC as BMC IV does. It has been my standard catalogue of the Severan coinage for decades, and I would certainly recommend that you acquire a copy!

BMC V also has a similar unsatisfactory arrangement of the catalogue as in BMC IV, made even more complicated (a) by the larger number of people for whom coins were struck, reaching a high of five between 202 and 205 (Septimius, Domna, Caracalla, Plautilla, Geta), and (b) by Mattingly's ill-advised decision to break the period 193-217 into five different "reigns", each with catalogue numbers starting again at 1, namely

1. Septimius, 193-8.

2. Septimius and Caracalla, 198-209.

3. Septimius, Caracalla, and Geta, 209-11.

4. Caracalla and Geta, 211.

5. Caracalla alone, 211-7.

It would have been much better, I think, to divide these years into just two reigns, those of the successive senior Augusti,

Septimius Severus, 193-211.

Caracalla, 211-7.

Other weaknesses of the volume are Mattingly's erroneous assignment of more than half of the Roman coinage of Macrinus to the mint of Antioch rather than Rome, an error corrected in the revised reprint of BMC V in 1975, and his confused division of the gold and silver coinage of Elagabalus between Rome and an Eastern mint, when in fact there was a third mint too, a branch mint apparently using Roman engravers.

But still, as I said, BMC V preserves the virtues of BMC IV, chiefly the accurate description and fairly complete illustration of one of the world's finest and largest collections of Roman coins.
Curtis Clay

Offline silvernut

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Re: BMC vs. RIC for the coins of Augustus to Balbinus and Pupienus
« Reply #6 on: January 13, 2010, 08:03:03 am »
Thank you all for your replies, which only reinforce my wish to buy it. BMC V has been on my wish list for a while, but Santa Claus had other priorities for me these Christmas, so I'll have to allocate part of my coin budget to it. I will definitely buy it, sooner rather than later.

Regards,
Ignasi

 

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