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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;lehmansterms, post: 4263573, member: 80804&quot;]Yes, as a beginner the learning curve can resemble an unscalable cliff to those just encountering it. Don&#039;t let the complexity which can be applied to the coinage deter you. You&#039;ll pick it up easily enough - and never hesitate to ask questions.&nbsp; </p><p>Simplifying somewhat, &quot;SC&quot; = &quot;Senatus Consultio&quot; which means that the Æ coinage was produced by order/agreement of the Senate which had responsibility for the &quot;small change&quot; coin supply in the Imperial era. Members (usually junior members hoping to begin climbing the ladder) were named as aediles in charge of the coinage - a yearlong assignment to what was probably a not so great job which was the usual first step on the &quot;cursus honorem&quot;. This had been a much more obvious situation in the Republican era. As the coinage was issued (in most cases) in addition to being in the aedile&#039;s name, the name of the family to which the junior senator/aedile belonged was always stated. The &quot;Babelon&quot; (RSC) system of numbering for Republican coinage is based on the families to which the aediles belonged. It happened fairly seldom, but the occasional emergency issue of silver would also be ordered by the senate and so a few issues of the Republican era AR denarii, quinarii and sestertii also have SC stated on them.</p><p>In the Imperial era, the precious metal coinage came under the control of the emperor&#039;s administration, but responsibility for the base metals issues remained the province of the Senate. They took every opportunity to make sure a statement of this appeared on every coin for which they were responsible. </p><p>At the time when inflationary pressures had caused the formerly silver antoninianus to be become basically a base metal coin, all the old, heavy &quot;fractional&quot; Æ denominations were first given short shrift in production, and soon thereafter discontinued altogether. The 260&#039;s were about the end of the line for regular production of sestertii, dupondii, asses, etc. which displayed SC somewhere in their reverse design.</p><p>This is very different from the &quot;control&quot; field markings of the 4th &amp; 5th centuries. Those control letters and symbols are approximately equivalent to the batch numbers printed on canned goods - it allowed the administration to identify which mint and workshop might have been responsible for underweight or poorly made coins.</p><p>It also served to a lesser extent as a defense against counterfeiting as the sequences were known and if the combination of letters/symbols, whatever, was wrong and didn&#039;t fit into the series, the likelihood of a coin being of unofficial origin was much higher.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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