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!