(1) Related issue, I’d say, but can’t be same die, because yours is of the ‘seen from back’ formula, and mine isn’t (I
had a hard time finding a father & son alike in that regard, and when I did they agreed in other respects, too).
(2) Yes, I’d call your second a
portrait that presents the boy formally,
qua heir to throne. I haven’t really got into studying these yet. Different genres of portraiture may have been chosen because of impressions that they tended to convey.
(3) That is exactly what I would like to know: all about those consular legates who were governors of
Moesia Inf. and
Thrace. These are important
men and doubtless interesting. The coins themselves show differences from one to the next that cannot be uninteresting. There is no way to ‘proceed’ from the last coinage of
Caracalla to the first coinage for
Macrinus. I do suspect that some governors were eager to produce distinguished coins, coins that other governors and cities might admire, and some governors may have encouraged die engravers and
mint masters to vie with one another and with their counterparts elsewhere, not only to flatter (though that was done, doubtless) but simply to excel. Some of these
men probably
had a taste for
fine coins as well as
engraved gems and tableware and what not. But in some cases we wouldn’t even know their names, but for the coins; in some cases
PIR and
Beamtennamen come down to the same evidence: coins. When we do get a name, say, in
Herodian, it is not in a connection that really helps us in our
work.
(4) Yes, indeed. But those are subjects without predicates, as with so much Social Studies
writing.
There are indeed die links a-plenty for the
obverse dies, but I don’t like to mix images taken with varying lighting, or scans with photographs, in presenting them. You can go nuts with ou diphthongs and the ei/i variable. I'll present them as soon as I can.
For me
Pick is essential, partly because
his introductory chapters are so
good, partly because I learned from him why painstaking recording of legends is so important, partly because
his care and restraint are so exemplary.
Pick is my teacher, in other words, not to say that others aren’t. But you can’t get just the first three tomes (vols. I, 1, I, 2, and II)—and you’d regret not having the other two if you did—so it’s not
cheap. At least, I’ve never seen it
cheap.
Pat