Error in BMCRE4

Please feel free to post comments, coins erroneously described in standard references, or anything you feel is relevant!

A word of caution about using old references -- even the most trusted of them can be in error.

I noticed an error in the print version of Coins Of The Roman Empire In The British Museum Vol.4 (Antoninus Pius To Commodus), published in 1940. In the listing of denarii of Faustina I with the DIVA FAVSTINA obverse legend and AETERNITAS reverse legend. The catalog of the collection notes two Juno (?) standing types, listed on pp. 53-54:



Here is an example of the first type (BMCRE4 345-353) from my own collection, with Juno (?), veiled and draped, standing facing, head left, raising right hand and holding scepter in left hand.



The second type is noted only by an asterisk after no. 353 on p. 54, indicating it does not appear in the British Museum Collection. The coin's reverse is described as Juno (?), veiled and draped, standing facing, head right, drawing back veil with right hand and holding scepter in left hand.

Here's an example from my own collection:



Here's what BMCRE p. 54 says about the coin in the footnote:



It cites Cohen 40, and notes it is "apparently the same as No. 280," which has the DIVA AVG FAVSTINA obverse legend. Here's an example from my own collection:



So far, so good. BMCRE4 notes the existence of two coins, one with the DIVA AVG FAVSTINA legend and one with the DIVA FAVSTINA obverse legend, the former in the British Museum collection, the latter not in the collection, but cited by Cohen.

But remember the listing for 352, under the multiple listings for the Juno (?) standing facing, head l., raising r. arm and holding scepter in l. reverse type? Let's look at it again.



It says "but head r." I wanted to actually look at the example in the British Museum, so I looked it up online at their website. This is catalog No. 352 in the museum's collection:



Look familiar? It's the reverse type that supposedly wasn't in the British Museum collection and had to be footnoted with an asterisk and cited as Cohen 40!! The museum acquired the coin in 1877, so was in the collection when Mattingly cataloged it in 1940. It was just misdescribed as depicting Juno (?) with her right arm extended.

The British Museum has since corrected the error in its online description of the coin. It describes the reverse of this coin as "Juno (?), veiled and draped, standing facing, head right, drawing back veil with right hand and holding sceptre in left hand." Moreover, the online listing cites RIC3 346a, p.69 as a reference for the type. Here's the listing in RIC3 (which was published before BMCRE4, by the way):



You'll note it cites Cohen 40, just as the footnote in BMCRE4 on p. 54. You'll also note that the identity of the standing female figure on the reverse is uncertain, with Juno and Venus each listed as possibilities.

 

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I don't see why you would conclude that 352 is to be identified with the coin described by Mattingly at *. His description of *, from Cohen, was for a coin in which the figure was facing right, and not merely facing with head right (a distinction observed in body posture). That described a coin he could not find. His footnote on * deals mainly with the various possible identities of the figure, for which he refers back to #280 as the first of the overall type under Faustina. His long footnote on #280 tells of that problem in identity, but not one peep about body posture. So if the curatorial staff today is throwing in the towel and saying that no such coin * with the figure facing right exists, their argument is against Cohen. Mattingly had merely reported what Cohen had said, probably for completeness, but admitted that nothing matched that in the Museum collection.

The real question is whether or not Cohen was correct that such a coin with the figure facing right exists, and not the question of whether or not the British Museum has an example of it. Mattingly certainly knew that he could not prove it one way or the other based on what he had available to him. I'm with Mattingly on this; I don't think an argument from silence will do it. Inasmuch as I do know of two dealers in France who still rely on Cohen more than the British references, it's worth keeping it straight.

 

Then how do you explain the lack of a catalog number for a coin with the same features as 280 but the obverse legend DIVA FAVSTINA? How do you explain the inaccurate description of 352? How do you explain the subsequent change to the cross-reference of 352 and the change in the description of the reverse at the BMC's website?

The only explanation is that I have given -- that Mattingly thought they didn't have a coin like 280 but with the DIVA FAVSTINA legend but wanted to include it for the sake of completeness, so he added it after 353, with the proper description of the reverse. Meanwhile, he notes the existence of 352 -- but it's cataloged as having a reverse type with the goddess's right arm extended (not pulling at her veil), but with head facing right.

Had he looked at coin 252, he would have made it No. 253 (No. 253 with the veiled bust would have become 252 and taken its place) and described it properly. In the footnote section, it would have said "253. C. 40 (rev. Aeternitas or Pudicitia): one might also ..." This is how the notes to the various coins read in BMCRE. See, for example, the rest of the notes on p. 54.



Some curator subsequently noted the error in the description of BMCRE 352, changed the reverse description and noted it matched RIC 346a, which cites Cohen.

 

An interesting discussion - I have no informed opinion about this, I just have a similar coin to the original post. I got it a few years ago when my attribution skills were even shakier than they are now.

I typically use OCRE to figure these things out. When I just checked again and see that RIC 346b is incorrect - they list the obverse legend without the AVG - although the 25 examples that are legible show the AVG (OCRE has a lot of errors like this, I am coming to discover). http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.3.ant.346B

Anyway, here is mine - RIC 346b I think -




Faustina I (the Elder)
Wife of Antoninus Pius
(141-161 A.D.)
DIVA AVG FAVSTINA, bust right, draped / AETERNITAS,
Venus or Aeternitas standing rt. drawing veil & holding scepter
RIC 346b
(2.38 grams / 17 mm)


Another oddity I noticed on OCRE is the listing for RIC 346A - only two examples, with the British Museum example sporting a on the obverse DIVAE - a legend variation I'd never seen before. Again, OCRE doesn't note this. Neither does BMCRE above - if I am reading it right (which I may not be). http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.3.ant.346A

 

Not to reply to my own post, but I see Roman Collector had a very thorough exploration of this type last year, including the DIVAE variation (rare, but still in the wrong place on OCRE):

https://www.cointalk.com/threads/faustina-i-denarius-scarce-aeternitas-type.317976/

 

Yes, that is RIC 346b.

The other example (DIVA FAVSTINA) is the British Museum specimen 352, which I illustrated above -- the one misidentified in the print version of BMCRE4.

 

Actually, the version with the dative ending is listed in BMCRE as #487, under the header "EXCEPTIONAL OBVERSE". I do not find a corresponding entry in RIC for this.

To be clear did you mean 252/253 (coins of Antoninus Pius) or 352/353? I assume you meant the latter. While I agree that Mattingly's description of BMC 352 does not match the BMC pic of 352, neither do I find anything anywhere that corresponds to what it would look like if it were to be found at all. Moreover, I do not find any examples of the "facing head left" reverse figure that fusses with the veil. This leads me to suspect that continuing the ditto marks down to the 352 entry was the culprit which caused a false entry at that point and overlooked the listing of the later obverse inscription variety with this reverse. However, I have one problem with correlating the #280 reverse with that of #352; namely that the latter in the pic from the BMC website does not appear to have a bare midriff "sown with stars." Minor detail that may or may not have had an impact on the identification of the deity (especially if Pudicitia was meant). Among the coins with the dative ending I see that the example shown above by Marsyas Mike is not clear on that point, but the example offered by Rauch in 2003 is very clear with its stars:


This reverse is in the style associated with the earlier obverse type. Perhaps it was an intermediate stage. And as long as we're at it, another variety which neither RIC nor BMCRE managed to list is the obverse with left-facing bust:

This should have followed 353 as obverse type c as another * entry. Note the rearrangement of the shorter/later obverse inscription.

 

Yes, that's what I meant. Thank you for bringing the error to my attention; I have edited my post above to avoid future confusion.

I, too, wondered if BMC 352 was "sown with stars." Let's take another look at the figure on the reverse of their specimen.



The goddess clearly is messing with her veil, not extending her right arm. I concur that the stars -- not unequivocally present -- are not as clearly rendered as on the specimen with the DIVA AVG FAVSTINA reverse. I think we'd have to examine the specimen in-hand. Let's compare the reverse figure on my example.



Although mine is more worn, there are stars present, which we can't say unequivocally about BMC 352. But otherwise, the reverse design is the same.

Agree. That's the error to which I referred in the OP.

It may have been. As I have pointed out elsewhere on this forum, the coins with the DIVA FAVSTINA obverse legend and the AETERNITAS reverse were issued in AD 150/151 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the empress's death. Thus, BMC 280 and 352 may have been minted a decade apart. Some iconographic variation is to be expected, and I think this accounts for the difference in how prominent the stars are on the figure's abdomen. Nobody knows when the DIVAE FAVSTINAE version of the coin was issued and your hypothesis of it being an intermediate stage is as good as any.

Type (d), actually, because it's a left-facing veiled bust (type (c) is left-facing bare-headed). And, had this variety been known to Mattingly, it should have been included. I suspect he was unaware of this variety. It is listed in Temeryazev and Makarenko as No. 105.

I think that 353 should have replaced 352 in the list of "Juno (?)" types with her right arm extended as the (b) bust variety, followed by a * listing for the (d) bust variety, with 352 becoming 353 with an accurate description of the reverse figure and a comment about the correlation to Cohen 40 and the presence/absence of stars in a footnote.

Overall, this has been a very interesting discussion about what some would consider flyspecking, but that's how new hypotheses are generated and knowledge is disseminated.

 

Quite right. I have seen images of two examples of the "d" bust, but did observe that the list stops at type "c" for Mattingly and RIC.

I agree on the need to allow for some variation over the time gap. On the other hand, I am not finding that the variance fits a regular pattern. Last year we were toying with the appearance of graphic symbols as ciphers for the identity of specific goddesses. Now as then I am inclined to associate fussing with the veil as an aspect most particular to Pudicitia. You pointed out, perhaps tongue in cheek/check, that "a bare midriff sown with stars" might have been too risque for that figure. I don't know enough about how such a thing might have been understood back then to comment on that, but the absence of the bare midriff and stars motif might well have been intentional. Not sure about moral scruples so much as a plan to incorporate another deity by means of slightly altered iconography. I will keep looking for the emergence of patterns as the store of variances mounts.

I had forgotten about the thread in January in which you first mentioned the Beckman study. I have not read that study, but if it is defensible, then it certainly is the kind of thing that will help to partition that long period of commemoration. Based on other phenomena such as the vota coinage we know the Romans were attracted to decimal observances (annual, quinquennial, decennial) which would figure into the coinage, not only for issuance but for overt and covert design features. Looking for patterns is one approach to cracking the codes.

For all that I appreciate the durability of this thread over time.

 

Not to fill this thread up with my junk...but I am interested in this topic. Primarily because I am always surprised the difficulties I encounter with Faustina I when attributing a new find - on one had, the coins are abundant, but on the other hand the varieties are bewildering (which is to say that I appreciate the efforts of RC & Irbguy here).

Anyway, I found in my duplicates another example of RIC 346b - this one has a catastrophic planchet lamination (?) causing the obverse edge to slough away - at first I thought it was fourree, but the inside looks silver to me:





To go off-metal, here is an ugly Faustina I as I recently picked up. I had difficulty attributing it, since the obverse legend lacks the AVG that the common version has (RIC 1163A) - not that I am suggesting rarity=value, but this one does seem to be scarce (or am I wrong about this?)



Faustina I Æ As
(c. 141-161 A.D.)
Rome Mint
DIVA FAV STINA, draped bust right / [AETERNITAS] S C, Providentia standing left, holding globe on extended right hand and vertical sceptre in left
RIC 1163B (scarce?) - (1163A with AVGVSTA is common?)
(9.68 grams / 24 mm)

 

The RIC listing for 1163(a) comes in two flavors, one of which is common, one is scarce. The scarce listing is the one with the obverse type in which the figure facing right is veiled [1163a(b)]; for the common type the figure also faces right but is not veiled [1163a(a)]. On your coin the obverse figure is not veiled.

 

I understand the veiled portrait difference. What puzzled me initially was the difference between the obverse legends - AVGVSTA or no-AVGVSTA.

Taking only non-veiled into account, according to OCRE, I think mine is 1163B (as) without the AVGVSTA - according the OCRE 1163Aa has the AVGVSTA. The AVGVSTA version seems far more common, based on what I see online.

Am I confused, or is OCRE wrong (again)? Here is the search I used:

http://numismatics.org/ocre/results...onze"+AND+portrait_facet:"Faustina+the+Elder"

 

Ah, sorry, I misunderstood what you were asking. You are correct that your coin is not RIC 1163(a)(a or b subtype) but is 1163(b) [i.e. without "AVGVSTA] which only comes as an (a) subtype. That item is indeed rated "scarce" even with the basic obverse decoration, which your coin has. However, the rarity scales in RIC are not entirely uniform for sources or purpose across the volumes and may not directly translate to market frequency. Of greater significance, I think, is the likelihood that the coins with the shorter obverse inscription [i.e. 1163(b)] were produced later than those with the longer inscription [both classes of (a)]. As with the denarii, so also the bronze, that time difference is reflected in the BMCRE listings but not in RIC.

 

Thanks, Irbguy - I appreciate the assistance!

 

Let's look at the RIC listing for middle bronzes with the AETERNITAS reverse inscription and depicting Providentia (two different reverse designs).




I do not believe RIC 1163b exists; RIC cites it on the basis of a single coin excavated in Richborough. I cannot find a single copy online and Mattingly's footnote (BMCRE4, p. 249) is very telling:



Mattingly apparently believed RIC 1163b was misdescribed on the basis of an illegible obverse legend. I concur with him.

@Marsyas Mike 's coin cannot be 1163b because there is no such thing.

The reason the reverse design of RIC 1164 is different is that it was issued years after the version with the DIVA AVGVSTA FAVSTINA legend. As @lrbguy notes,

To elaborate, the coins with the DIVA AVGVSTA FAVSTINA (copper alloy and gold) or DIVA AVG FAVSTINA (all metals) and with the AETERNITAS reverse type were issued in AD 141, shortly after Faustina's death, and "immediately afterward" (BMCRE4, p. 229). But we know, based on die-linkage studies of Faustina's aurei, that a second massive issue of coins in all denominations bearing the reverse legend AETERNITAS took place in AD 150/151 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the empress's death; these coins have the shorter legend, DIVA FAVSTINA.*

The BMC collection is cataloged chronologically, rather than on the basis of common design features, and assigns the two issues very different catalog numbers.

The coin with the DIVA AVGVSTA FAVSTINA legend and Providentia with globe and scepter is BMC 1458 (an as with the bare-headed bust), 1459 (an as with a veiled bust) and 1460-1461 (dupondii with a veiled bust).



Here's my example of BMC 1460-61, a dupondius with the veiled bust.



The coin with the DIVA FAVSTINA inscription and Providentia raising right hand and holding globe in left hand (RIC 1164) is represented by two coins in the British Museum collection, each with a bare-headed bust and differing in denomination and die-axis. They are assigned Nos. 1559 (dupondius?) and 1560 (as).



I don't have an example in my collection. Here is 1560 from the British Museum.



Looking at the reverse of your coin, I'm not sure it has this reverse design:



Does she have a scepter or torch in her left hand? Am I seeing things? Perhaps Ceres holding corn ears and long torch (BMC 1539)? Juno raising right hand and holding vertical sceptre in left hand (BMC 1540)?

This has been a very interesting discussion, indeed.

*Beckmann, Martin. Diva Faustina: Coinage and Cult in Rome and the Provinces.American Numismatic Society, 2012, pp. 63-69.

 

Thank you RC for taking so much time & effort into my cruddy little as. I am really having trouble getting a good photo of the reverse - my photography skills combined with the poor condition of the coin is a bad mix. Here are a couple more attempts - including one blurry one which for some reason shows the scepter (?) in her left hand clearly.

My best guess:

Left Hand: holding long scepter or torch. The top is obscured, so I cannot tell if it widens out into a torch. Squiggly fold of dress runs parallel to this.

Right Hand: impossible to tell? I really think it is obliterated by wear/pitting, but it is an extended arm, bent at elbow.

There is some reverse legend visible - first "A" and the "T" - it seems long enough for AETERNITAS, but maybe it is AVGVSTA.

Again, thanks for taking the trouble with this dog biscuit. Feel free to give up on it!

 

Fortuna holding globe and rudder????

 

Hmmmm. It could be a rudder. That "scepter" might be wider at the base - the pitting is so bad it is hard to tell.

If it is a rudder, does the obverse legend break matter for attribution? Mine is DIVA FAV-STINA whereas this one divides cleanly at the word breaks (you don't have to answer that - I am not trying to get you to do my homework).

I find myself being sucked into the wormhole of Faustina minutiae! Help! (Actually I rather enjoy it).

 

One last question, @Marsyas Mike : how sure are you the reverse reads AETERNITAS? Because there are additional possibilities for AVGVSTA and others.

No. Almost every issue of hers is known with DIVA-FAVSTINA and DIVA FAV-STINA varieties.

Here's my AETERNITAS dupondius with Fortuna; it has a DIVA FAV-STINA obverse legend.

 

Oh, I am not sure about that reverse legend at all - I've stared at the pits, and vague blobs that might be letters until my eyeballs fell out (exaggerating, but only slightly). I really think this may be the case of just too much wear to tell what is going on exactly - which is only mildly frustrating.

Trying to figure these out is such an enjoyable process. Even when the end result is a ?

I picked it up as part of a lot of 2 - mostly I wanted the other coin, a sestertius of Faustina II that isn't in much better shape (but the price was right). Both coins actually looked much better in hand that I expected (the As discussed here has, I think, a nice portrait, if nothing else).

The sestertius is (I think):

Faustina II Æ Sestertius
(176-180 A.D.)
Rome Mint
DIVA FAVSTINA PIA, draped bust right / [AETERNITAS] S C, Aeternitas standing left, holding [globe with phoenix] and leaning on column.
RIC 1693; BMC 1563.
(22.86 grams / 29 mm)