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Message:: [QUOTE="otlichnik, post: 5260307, member: 109731"]Sadly, there is no easy answer here.  We don't know what the ancients called all of their coins or denominations - though we know some.  We also don't know exactly how they structured their coinage.  No mint records survive. There is a difference between attribution and type. Attribution generally refers to matching a coin to some catalogue or guidebook.  RIC-III Marcus Aurelius 677 really just means the 677th entry under Marcus Aurelius in the third volume of The Roman Imperial Coinage, by Spink Books.  But different books (including the different volumes of RIC) treat the coinage differently.  Take a bronze coin of Marcus Aurelius.  RIC might give different numbers depending on whether the SC is in the field or under the design (in the exergue).  Or different numbers for different spacing gaps in the legend.  These are differences that you can see and you can decide which one your coin fits in.  But did they matter to the Romans?  Did they reflect different issues by time or mint or workshop?  Or where they just differences from different engravers or even the same engraver on different dies?  We don't always know. SC[/QUOTE]