There are many books on the subject of Roman Imperial coins. Below are my personal reviews of some of them.
1. Roman Coins and Their Values (RCV) by David Sear. 4th Edition, Seaby 1988. This is one of the great handbooks of the Roman series. "RCV"
or "Sear" numbers are often quoted when describing a coin. This 4th edition is currently being superseded by an all-new RCV which will comprise four volumes in total. At present (January 2003), the first two volumes only are
available. This review will confine itself to the 1988 edition.
2. The Coinage of Roman Britain by Gilbert Askew. Seaby 1951 This is a slim volume of less than 100 pages, and is difficult to obtain. It is, however, still virtually definitive for the specifically British coinage of the
Roman Empire. 889 coins with British associations are listed. A chronological approach is taken, starting with the coins celebrating the successful annexation of Britain into the empire by Claudius in AD43. The book is particularly
strong, as would be expected, in the coinage of the seccessionist emperors Carausius and Allectus, listing no less than 176 coin types for these rulers, and identifying 37 different mint marks. An interesting chapter on barabarous
radiates, written by Philip V. Hill is included as an appendix. 3. Identifying Roman Coins by Richard Reece and Simon James, Seaby 1986, 1994 The subtitle, "A Practical Guide to the Identification of Site Finds in Britain" more or
less sums up this very slim (48pp) volume. Specific issues are not discussed, but armed with this little book, field archaeologists or metal detectorists should be able to identify their finds down to emperor and basic type
in a very short time. This gives the answer to the crucial dating question. 166 line drawings give a pretty good overview of the commonest types of coins found on Roman sites, or what you might find if you're lucky whilst grubbing
around in your flower beds. 4. Roman Coins Found in Britain by Adrian Marsden, Greenlight Publishing, 2001 104 A4-sized pages take the reader through Denominations and Legends, Reverse Types and Legends, Obverse Busts
and Types, Mints and Mint Marks, Coins in Britain AD 43 - 238, 238 - 296, 296 - 362, 362 - 410, Contemporary Imitations of Roman Coins and Cataloguing, Cleaning and Care of Coins. This is a lovely book. Lavishly illustrated with
high quality colour photographs and packed with information, it should be on the bookshelves of every collector of the Roman series. 5. The Handbook of Roman Imperial Coins by David van Meter, Laurion Press, 1991, 1992, 2000
A very welcome addition to the corpus of identification guides. The publishers, however, do themselves no favours by the somewhat arrogant title - "A
Handbook..." would have been preferable (and more accurate). The subtitle "A Complete Guide to the History, Types and Values of Roman Imperial Coinage" is again inaccurate. It is not complete, no single volume could hope to be, but it is a very thorough introduction to the subject. The blurb on the back continues in this vein. It is described as a "major new reference work", which it most certainly is, and as "The NEW Standard Catalog of Roman Coins", which it most certainly is not. Enough of that, one should not judge a book by its cover. The cover is the work of hype artists. The meat of this book is the catalogue of 8,160 coin types, with over 1,000 photographs. This is indeed very impressive, and the clear and concise layout of the book permits a coin to be found very quickly indeed. Whilst I have no hesitation at all in recommending this book to all collectors of Roman Imperial coins, there are petty distractions, which tend to spoil the excellence of the book. Typos and misspellings abound, and there are errors and inconsistencies to be found. For example, on the first page of chapter one, it is stated that in AD 476 (or 476 AD, as the book insists), the young emperor Romulus Augustus was killed at the same time as his father (who is not named but was the German general Orestes). This is incorrect, and we find in the introduction to the section on the "Western Puppet-Emperors" that he was retired to Campania, which is correct. Again at the beginning of the book we are told that the emperor Philip reinstituted the secular games on the occasion of the 800th anniversary of Rome's foundation. It was actually the 1000th anniversary.
6. Roman Coins - Monete Romane v3 CD-ROM by Pierluigi Ridolfi I love
this CD. It has high resolution images of 4,500 coins - mostly imperial but with some republican, provincial and Byzantines thrown in for good measure. The database is filterable, though, so you can choose what types of coin you
get to see. The type, metal, mint, weight, diameter, condition and value for each coin are given, along with obverse and reverse images and legends. The grading of the coins illustrated follows the French system, so unless you know
what "BB" and "SPL" mean, you'll be a bit lost. Not that you're missing much, Ridolfi's grading is quite whacky. The value is given without denomination, and when I contacted the author, he couldn't remember whether the value was
in euros or thousand liras. As for RCV (above) the value can be used as an indicator of rarity. The comments field displays curious codes which I have not yet figured out. Also on this CD are brief biographies of most of the coin
issuers, including photographs of statues of them (if available), descriptions of gods, goddesses and personifications that appear on the reverse of the coins and a section with hundreds of pictures of archaeological sites. The
author's grasp of English is not perfect, and this can lead to some odd phrasing and spelling. "Goddess" for example, is always spelled "godness". This is just a nice CD to have. It's easily navigable and you have a good chance of
finding a coin that matches your own. 7. The Dirty Old Coins Database on CD-ROM Basically, this CD contains the Dirty Old Coins website, along with its huge database of Roman Imperial coins. To see what you get,
visit
8. Byzantine Coins and Their Values by David Sear This is the must-have volume for all collectors of the Byzantine series. The format will be familiar to anyone who has used Sear's other volumes, "Roman Coins and Their
Values" and "Greek Coins and Their Values". The difference with this volume is that it is essentially complete. Of course there are occasional omissions, and every now and then a coin will turn up which is not listed here, but
these occurrences are far more infrequent than for the Roman volume(s), for instance. There is a short introduction which covers usage, mints and denominations, which is useful, but what would have been really useful is a glossary
of terms used throughout the book in the coin descriptions. If the vital clue to identifying a coin is the fact that the emperor is "as last but wearing chlamys instead of colobium" then you get no further clues from this book as
to what that means. Collectors and students of Byzantine coins use many esoteric terms which are sprinkled liberally and thickly throughout this book with no explanation. It would have taken two or three pages to give full
explanations and examples, and this book is the place where those explanations should be given.
The book comprises a very thorough introduction to the Roman series and a catalogue of 4412 coin types from the earliest republican coinage through to the issues
of the emperor Anastasius before his reforms of AD498, whereupon the Byzantine series is deemed to have begun.
The coin desriptions are very complete in themselves, but it is perhaps surprising that so many coins can be found
that are not listed. A major cause of this is the very specificness of the descriptions. For example, RCV3940 - the decription runs as follows: "AE3 (c 19mm) CONSTANTIVS IVN . NOB . CAES. Rev. ALAMANNIA DEVICTA. Victory advancing
r., l. foot on captive; in ex., . SIRM . C. 1. R.I.C. 50." All very well, a nice, clear, concise description. The problem is that if you have this exact coin, but from a different mint, and hence with a different
exergual legend, there is no RCV number for it. Many coins would thus have to be classed as RCV3940v.
In-text images of coins are pretty sparse, with maybe only one, two or three per issuer. A series of plates at the back of the
book adds a further 155 coins, but this is still very small compared to the 4412 listed. The plates also tend to show the higher denomination coins, often in gold, which are obviously also the most expensive coins, and hence not of
much use as identification guides for the collector on a less-than-national budget.
And so to the "values". The values are nominally for a coin in good very fine condition, and reflect the market in the late 1980s. These values
bear little relation to the realities of the market of the early 2000s. They are still useful, however, as an indicator of the general rarity of a coin. The higher the price quoted, the rarer the piece.
Despite these quibbles,
RCV is a "must-have" book for the collector of the Roman series. This book is now out of print, but second hand copies should be available for £10 - £20. Well worth the investment.
Although this book is now over half a century old, and hence somewhat dated, it is a wonderful example of scholarly writing, and should you happen across a copy in
a second hand book shop, I recommend that you buy it.
Another niggle is the author's apparent belief that all Latin plurals end with -ii. Hence we have "Augustii" instead of "Augusti", "antoninianii" instead of "antoniniani" and "aureii" instead of "aurei". Whilst reviewing the
reforms of Aurelian, the author states that some numismatists refer to the post-reform antoninianus as the "aurelianus" (the plural, of course, is given as "aurelianii"). In fact, by analogy with Antoninus - antoninianus, the post
reform coin would be referred to as the "aurelianianus" plural "aurelianiani". The word "dupondius" is consistently misspelled "dupondis".
It could be argued that these are minor quibbles, but it all speaks of sloppy editing.
Some sentences are so full of typos that it's clear that no proofreader has been anywhere near them. More disturbingly, some legends in the main catalogue are mistyped, and this can only lead to confusion.
In conclusion, this is
a potentially first-rate resource that has been spoiled by careless editing. I do recommend it to all collectors, but do be aware of its shortcomings.
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