Recherches numismatiques sur l'empereur Pertinax: Corpus du monnayage impérial et provincial

In a recent post querying a coin of Pertinax I saw the action house citing Lempereur. I since found out that this reference is a recent publication and managed to track one down and ordered it.

"Recherches numismatiques sur l'empereur Pertinax: Corpus du monnayage impérial et provincial" by Olivier Lempereur was published in 2020. It is about 530 pages long and quite a hefty book. The book priced at 50 Euros.



The book is in French but that is not a barrier to me as I can work my way through most French numismatic books with my schoolboy level French which has been enhanced by reading several French numismatic books in recent years.

The book starts with the historical context around the reign of Pertinax

The book then gets straight into a catalog of the output of the mint at Rome.

The approach taken is to work through type by type but goind down a level of detail than is available in the more general references. It details the know dies for each type and then details the known examples for each obverse and reverse die combination. The sources of the information are a combination of the usual suspects of major museums but also covers some private collections and well known sales venues and sales catalogues old and new and even Ebay sales.

It is this detailed die analysis that makes up the meat of the book. To some this would be too much detail but to others this is exactly what you would be looking for with the output of an emperor with such a short reign.

The aureii and denarii of the First Emission of Rome take up almost hundred pages! This is before it moves on to the Sestertii of the Second Emission and then on through Dupondii, aureii and denarii.

None of the above pages are illustrated so I feel that it is worth leaping forward to the plates at the back of the book at this point. The plates are well done with good quality, clear, life size images. It would appear that at least one example has been included for each die pair identified with some being illustrated by several examples.

The book now changes pace and includes a numismatic study of the artistry behind the busts relating them to statuary. It also analyses the varying reverse types with regards to their symbology and poitical messaging.

The next chapter deals with the methods used in the mint mainly looking at die linkages before moving on to another chapter looking at the metrology.

The next is the output of Alexandria. The approach is much the same as that from Rome. It is evident that the Alexandrian output is much smaller than that of Rome as this only takes 20 pages..... before moving on to another artistry and reverse detail chapter focussed on the Alexandrian coinage. This is followed by mterology and die linkages.

There are now separate chapters for Tomis and Prusa ad Olympum each being a miniature version of the structure of the imperial mints.

After a brief conclusion there are several appendices covering a gold quinarius, examples cited in RIC that were not encounterd in the analysis and then the posthumous issues minted under Septimius Severus.

The book finishes with the plates which I must admit I have flicked though with an admiring eye.

I don't own any coins of Pertinax yet but will certainly be giving this book some exercise when I do.

 

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Thanks for the break down on what sounds like a very fun read!
Pertinax is one of my favorite, "what coulda beens?"
Here's mine:

 

Sounds like a magnificent study, and the author has the best name ever for a numismatic writer: Oliver the Emperor!

 

Think i saw book before:
https://www.cointalk.com/threads/a-new-pertinax-book.376260/

 

Does the Alexandria chapter cover both the Latin and Greek language issues?

 

Internet and the availability of databases like CoinArchives or ACSearch have made numismatic studies enter a new era...

 

Sounds like a great book. Thanks for the information.

My one and only Pertinax:

IMP CAES P HELV PERTIN AVG // OPI DIVIN TR P COS II
Ops sitting, holding grain
Mint: Rome
Date: 193

 

I must have missed that thread.

Yes. It covers both.

 

Nice coin @Tejas

I was helped by the distinctive unbroken obverse legend which made die matching easier.

It looks like Obverse die D146, Reverse die R218 which would make it #384.

Attached are the plate examples for #384 for comparison.

 

Pertinax .. he was emperor, but not very long...he most likely been a decent one..with his death came destablization of the empire.. i like him so much i got 2 coins of him