Sale: CNG 75, Lot: 1006. Estimate $2000.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 23 May 2007.  Sold For $3100. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Nero. AD 54-68. Æ Sestertius (25.36 g, 7h). Lugdunum (Lyon) mint. Struck circa AD 67. Laureate head right, globe at point of bust / DECVRSIO, Nero on horseback riding right, holding spear; behind him, soldier on horseback right, holding vexillum. RIC I 581; WCN 462; Lyon 259. Good VF, green-brown patina, some smoothing.

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.