Resources for Late Roman Bronze Coinage (LRBC)

[Anaximander]

I have rather few late Roman bronze coins (and fewer than I would like), but I do have some, and I am always looking for attributions and descriptions. Let's share our numismatic titles and websites. 

The broader definition of LRBC are bronze and copper coins from the last two centuries of the Roman Empire, c. 294-498 AD. You could also narrow that down a bit by beginning in 317, with the first minting of coins for caesars Licinius II, Crispus, and Constantinus II, or even in 324, the year that Constantine triumphed over co-emperor Licinius. 

Among reference books, the classics are RIC and LRBC.
RIC: The Roman Imperial Coinage, Vol. VII to X, by various authors (Spink, London, 1966-1994).  
LRBC: Late Roman Bronze Coinage, AD 324-498, by Hill, Carson, and Kent (Spink, London, 1978). Vol. I (324-346) and II (346-498). 

         

Newer resources.
A Handbook of Late Roman Bronze Coin Types, 324-395, by Shawn Caza (Spink, London, 2021). 
Roman Bronze Coins: From Paganism to Christianity 294-364 A.D.  Victor Failmezger (2002)

I've not laid hands on Failmezger's work.

Websites
OCRE:  Online Coins of the Roman Empire (http://numismatics.org/ocre) 
Tesorillo: Identifying Late Roman Bronze Coins (https://www.tesorillo.com) 

  

  

Please share other resources on LRBC that you know about. 

[mr. wiggles]

As a newer collector, I’ve found the Tesorillo site to be very helpful for identifying coins. Typically I use this to have a preliminary attribution and then turn to Wildwinds or OCRE to pin down the exact attribution, minting date, and RIC number. 
 

Thanks for posting those other references, I’ll have to look at those to build out my library of references.

[seth77]

Nummus Bible is also very useful if your interest is to have an overview of how common or rare variations are and a quick RIC number: Bibliothèque de monnaies romaines

[seth77]

As for the beginning of the 'Late Roman' period, the most widely accepted convention in numismatics is that it starts with the reforms of Diocletian (the introduction of the nummus and a uniformized monetary system for the whole Empire + the instauration of the Dominate instead of the Principate as the Imperial governing style). But there also other possibilities and perspectives. I for instance prefer to add to this period the period just prior, that starts with the demise of local coinage throughout the provinces (c. 240s to c. 275) and ends once Diocletian introduces the Tetrarchy (293). This is a period of deep and lasting changes in the socio-political complexities of Roman provincial life, marked most strongly by the end of the power of old local elites and traditional community government, in one word the end of the 'polis'. This transitional period is relevant both historically and numismatically. So from this perspective the end of the 'classical' Roman Empire stops once local coinage dies out under Aurelian/Tacitus (Egypt non-included).

Edited January 5 by seth77

[Nerosmyfavorite68]

What was the c. 1960 book, rather thin, in a blue binding?  I believe it was called Late Roman Bronze coinage. I remember it being in teh college library.

[mr. wiggles]

1 hour ago, seth77 said:

Nummus Bible is also very useful if your interest is to have an overview of how common or rare variations are and a quick RIC number: Bibliothèque de monnaies romaines

Hi Seth77. I was checking this page out, where is the relative rarity listed for the coins?

 

 

[seth77]

4 minutes ago, mr. wiggles said:

Hi Seth77. I was checking this page out, where is the relative rarity listed for the coins?

 

 

If you search a specific variation you will get a number of entries, as few or as many as the variation is common or scarce in relation to other variations. The same with types or with pairings like Imperial figure-type-mint-officina. Just having there a C, S or R-R5 as in RIC is not very useful if that is what you were looking for.

[mr. wiggles]

Ah I see, thanks for clarifying that for me!

[Orange Julius]

6 hours ago, Nerosmyfavorite68 said:

What was the c. 1960 book, rather thin, in a blue binding?  I believe it was called Late Roman Bronze coinage. I remember it being in teh college library.

This one! It’s a good reference. Maybe a little out of date but still full of good information and used pretty widely.

Edit: Looks like it was listed in the first post too.

Edited January 6 by Orange Julius

[rasiel]

2 hours ago, Orange Julius said:

This one! It’s a good reference. Maybe a little out of date but still full of good information and used pretty widely.

Edit: Looks like it was listed in the first post too.

Despite the 1978 date seen here most of the corpus of LRBC is contemporary to RIC vols V-IX (not VIII) which was put together in the post WWII years so effectively nearing a century out of date. It is also unfortunately several steps backwards in terms of usability, with a bizarre and overcomplicated system of cataloging. My ERIC series was started in large part due to my frustration with how poorly I felt the project treated the whole coinage output from Valerian I onwards. 

Unlike Mattingly and Sydenham (who were strictly early empire fans) the job of covering the late empire was left to Carson. In my opinion he had the numismatic chops but lacked the organizational skills and vision necessary to translate his knowledge into a format that was easy to digest. In fact, the overall mission of RIC was expressly designed for the student to understand the chronology and sequence of the issues with a not so secret undercurrent of anti-collection bias. Yet, of course, RIC quickly turned into the collector's everyday tool anyway (maybe to their disappointment). 

For a website reference OCRE is honestly a shitty option, for LRB at least, being merely an effort to match RIC entries to actual specimens while making no effort to improve on the series' limitations. Acsearch is better in that it at least soaks up all the auctions so improves continually but even at my most objective assessment I can't see how there's anything out there that comes close to Coryssa for sheer breadth of coverage. I'm biased, of course - it's my work - so I want to be clear with this disclaimer, but if you are trying to track down an obscure Fel Temp or doing, say, a die study on Diocletian folles or whatever there's just nothing else like it. 

Rasiel 

Edited January 6 by rasiel

[Anaximander]

17 hours ago, Orange Julius said:

This one! It’s a good reference. Maybe a little out of date but still full of good information and used pretty widely.

Edit: Looks like it was listed in the first post too.

 

14 hours ago, rasiel said:

Despite the 1978 date seen here most of the corpus of LRBC is contemporary to RIC vols V-IX (not VIII) which was put together in the post WWII years so effectively nearing a century out of date. It is also unfortunately several steps backwards in terms of usability, with a bizarre and overcomplicated system of cataloging. My ERIC series was started in large part due to my frustration with how poorly I felt the project treated the whole coinage output from Valerian I onwards. 

Rasiel 

I was happy to buy LRBC on ebay, but underwhelmed when it arrived. Part I covers the period 324-346, and is just 40 pages long, with about 1483 coins and scarcely more than one plate. Part II covers the period 346-498 and is another 76 pages with about 2932 coins and 3 plates. It crams an average of 42 coins on each page of the catalog, and it is hugely condensed, much like RIC. @rasiel is correct in saying that it's overcomplicated. Everything is a code! To make sense of what I was seeing, I had to write myself a user guide. The image below (click to enlarge) shows the book's organization, the column headers for the catalogs, and examples on decoding the entries. I will try to upload a pdf below that also has some of the tables that you need to see while looking at the coin entries. 

  

 LRBC(Carson et al).TOC.pdf

LRBC(Carson et al).docx

Edited January 6 by Anaximander
Unsure about PDF, so adding Word file as alternative..

[Anaximander]

On 1/5/2025 at 1:10 PM, seth77 said:

Nummus Bible is also very useful if your interest is to have an overview of how common or rare variations are and a quick RIC number: Bibliothèque de monnaies romaines

Nice site, so thank you for pointing this out. My inner francophone can enjoy using it. 

 

I was initially unsuccessful in joining as a member, as the last step requires a verification via email link (Votre compte est actuellement inactif. Vous ne pouvez pas l'utiliser tant que vous n'aurez pas visité le lien suivant) that inexplicably failed. I've since figured it out. 

Edited January 10 by Anaximander