Nouvel ouvrage de référence

amis républicains,

Depuis peu, un nouvel ouvrage qui fera date est disponible sur les monnaies de la républiques:

The RBW collection of Roman Republican Coins

Il reprend les catalogues NAC 61 et 63 avec une grande quantité de matériel inédit.

Pour ceux qui sont intéressés, je copie les copies d'écran trouvés sur lamoneta.it:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ahala_rome/13412907063/in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ahala_rome/13413833513/in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ahala_rome/13413496863/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ahala_rome/13413910424/in/photostream

De ce que je peux en voir, la mise en page a l'air soignée et les photos de bonne qualité.

Le livre est disponibles pour 150 USD. C'est pas donné mais comparé au Crawford...
Voir aussi: http://www.arsclassicacoins.com/

J'ai les NAC 61 et 63. Mais ils ne remplaceront jamais le Crawford qui reste pour l'instant le plus complet sur le sujet. L'approche chronologique est interessante surtout pour les bronzes, comme je l'avais pressenti lors de la vente 61. Pour le reste, on est loin de l'étude de Crawford.

Apparement, l'ouvrage a été fortement enrichi par rapport aux NAC 61 et 63.

Je cite l'un des auteurs (Andrew McCabe):
"...The book represents a comprehensive revision with a great deal of extra material and many extra coins as compared with NAC61/63, with extra historical notes by David Vagi, and extra numismatic notes throughout by myself, and Richard Witschonke.

- It includes all the gold coins of the RBW collection which were not included in NAC61/63, as well as some other coin types that had been omitted from the original sales. Some of the sample pictures illustrate gold, e.g. a portrait aureus of Brutus and the famed first Roman portrait gold of Flamininus, both coins of great rarity, and that were not in NAC61/63, as well as many dozen more rare gold types.
- The book has been rearranged in strict Crawford order (unlike the sale catalogues) and thus will be a useful and relatively inexpensive alternative to buying Crawford's RRC, and in fact illustrates far more coin types than Crawford
- The book is in SNG format, about 450 pages, with the pictures on pages facing the cataloguing and text. However unlike SNG volumes, it is in full colour, and as such it may be the first comprehensive catalogue presented in this format. You can see in the example below, the entire Sickle series, Crawford 26, arranged on a single page with silver, struck bronze and aes grave. Such a picture of an entire large Crawford series, in all metals, has never been seen before, and this book is full of such pages.
- Every effort has been made to arrange pictures for clarity, for example, it avoids breaking Crawford series across two pages, unless the series is too long for one page, and enlargements are chosen to illustrate varieties, in the pictures below you will see that the varieties of Scarpus denarii, are enlarged for comparison; this selective enlargement has been used throughout the book to illustrate difficult series.
- The coin descriptions have been corrected throughout; it's not well known that hastily assembled auction catalogues often have many errors; especial care has been taken to eliminate these errors; overall there are perhaps some hundreds of corrections relative to NAC61/63
- The notes written by Roberto Russo and RBW have been kept throughout the book, but in addition, there are many historical descriptions written by David Vagi (most of which were not in NAC61/63) as well as numismatic notes added by Andrew McCabe and by Richard Witschonke (none of which were in NAC61/63). Some of these numismatic notes comment on special coin types. Other notes comment on research work that is underway or will be done in future, as an example, the note on the page of Luceria bronzes that comments on future work

I expect this book to become a standard reference in the future"

Il n'en reste pas moins que le Crawford demeure l'ouvrage de référence pour la période concernée mais malheureusement il reste difficile à trouver et lorsqu'on en trouve un, il faut être prêt à débourser plusieurs centaines d'euros (le moins cher que j'ai trouvé sur le net est à plus de 700 euros   ).

Pour cette raison, ce nouveau livre peut constituer une altenative entre un ALBERT, très bien fait mais manquant de commentaires historiques et un Crawford très onéreux (du moins je l'espère).