CNG 97, Lot: 625. Estimate $300. Sold for $360. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Nero. AD 54-68. Æ Sestertius (36mm, 22.39 g, 7h). Lugdunum (Lyon) mint. Struck circa AD 67. Laureate bust right, globe at point of bust / DECVRSIO in exergue, Nero on horseback riding right, holding spear; behind him, soldier on horseback right, holding vexillum. RIC I 581; WCN 462; Lyon 259. Fine, brown surfaces, minor roughness.

The decursio was a military training exercise which acquired ceremonial pageantry. The decursio Troiae was an equestrian event and may have been connected to the earlier Republican transvectio equitum, a ceremony Augustus reinstituted. A similar decursio appears on the base of the Column of Antoninus Pius.