"The life of iIk- Empire/' writes Maiiingly, " is, in 

 many ways, so like our own that wc can read of ii 

 without often feelins; shoek or surprise." "" The Coins 

 of the Roman Empire in the British Museum, a lars;e pulili- 

 cation of which six \olumes have been issued since 

 1923, and 'The Roman Imperial Coinage, a coniprehensi\c 

 work still in process of [)ul)licalion, which Maitini;i\-, 

 in collaboration with Sydeniiam, besjan to publisii in 

 the same year, constitute basic references for the hu- 

 perial series. Not to l)e o\erlooked also are Mattint;- 

 ly"s comprehensi\e studies, his earlier Roman Coins 

 from the Earliest Times to the Fall oj the Western Empire 

 (1928) and his more recent work Roman Imperial 

 Civilization (1957). 



Fig. 41. — II.\ROLu Matti.ngi.v (b. 1884), 

 famous British scholar (photo from Essays in 

 Roman Coinage). 



The two catalouts with their hi>;h scholarly stand- 

 ards — rellectcd in the chrcjuoloyical arran<;;eiuent of 

 the coin material, in detailed descriptions, in profuse 

 historical notes, and especially in elaborate studies of 

 the respective coinages which precede every volume — 

 should have supplanted Cohen's handbook on im- 

 perial coins with the general public, as it has with 

 scholars, but this has not been the ca.se. 



An article entitled "The Date of the Roman 

 Denarius and Other Landmarks in Eariv Roman 



13" Roman Imptrial CiiHizalion, pp. 2-3. For Mattingly's piil)- 

 lications, .sec Copingkr, Bihtiagraphy (1956). 



Coinage," which Mattingly and E. S. G. Robin.son 

 published in 1933 in the Proceedings oj the British 

 Academy, brought on one of the liveliest disputes in 

 numismatics. The British .scholars, using consider- 

 able material evidence, proposed to move the date 

 of the beginning of the Roman Republican denarius 

 from 269 B.C. to 187 B.C. This thesis, or as Rudi 

 Thomsen called it, "the Mattingly re\'olution," found 

 ready support in England, France, and Germany. 

 The Rev. E. A. Sydenham, apphing these premises, 

 wrote a handbook, The Coinage of lite Roman Republic 

 (1952), the first of its kind in the twentieth century 

 and a book which should replace Ernest Babelon's ob- 

 solete Monnaies consulaircs. In Germany Walther 

 Giesecke, the best modern specialist in ancient me- 

 trology, discussed the problem on a corresponding 

 basis in his bonk Antikes Geldwesen (1938) and arrived 

 at similar conclusions which invalidated the old, 

 traditional date. 



In direct opposition to this stand, there arose an 

 Italian school under Ettore Gal^rici, LorenzinaCesano, 

 Laura Breglia, and Attilio .Stazio.'^" .Such a dispute 

 could hardly fail to bring numismatics of the Roman 

 Republic to the center of scholarly attention, and a 

 considerable number of more or less authoritative 

 handbooks and articles have appeared in recent years, 

 taking \arious strong positions in the controversy. 



In 1952 the .Austrian luimismatist Karl Pink stepped 

 into the deljate with his publication Triumviri Mone- 

 tales and the Structure of the Coinage of the Roman Repub- 

 lic. Pink is renowned as the representative of the 

 \'icnncsc school of research, which attempts to estab- 

 lish, on the basis of data yielded by the coins, the 

 fundamental system of the organization of the Roman 

 niiai. On this premise, he outlined tlie structure of 

 the coinage, explaining its chronological .sequence as 

 well as its evolution. This "Aufbau," as it is called, 

 was used by Pink in his study "Der Aufbau der 

 romischen Miinzpriigung in der Kaiserzeit" (1933 + ) 

 and by other Viennese numisiuatists, such as Robert 

 Gobi and Georg Elmer, to determine the organiza- 

 tion of the mint in the late 3rd and 4th centuries A.D. 



The emphasis placed by Prof. Pink on a closer 

 study of the legal aspects of coinage as an expression 

 of the Roman state finds a counterpart in Prof. 

 Andreas Alfoldi's proposal to give more considera- 

 tion to stylistic elements as a clue in establishing 



'^" Sec the excellent outline in Thomsen, Early Roman Coins 

 (1957); alsoSxAzio, "Progressismo c conscrvatorismo ncglistudi 

 sulla pill antira monctazione romana" (1955). 



48 



BULLETI.N 229: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 



