Commemorating Sulla’s End of the Jugurthine War

Sale: CNG 76, Lot: 3217. Estimate $300.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 12 September 2007.  Sold For $560. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Faustus Cornelius Sulla. 56 BC. AR Denarius (3.77 g, 3h). Rome mint. Draped bust of Diana right, wearing stephane, cruciform earring, double necklace of pearls and pendants, and jewels in hair; crescent above, lituus behind / Sulla seated left on a raised seat; before him kneels Bocchus, offering an olive-branch; behind, Jugurtha kneeling left, hands bound behind his back. Crawford 426/1; Sydenham 879; Cornelia 59. VF, toned. Rare.

From the John A. Seeger Collection.

Faustus was the son of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the famous general and dictator of Rome (138-78 BC). The coin portrays Sulla's first great victory, in which he ended the Jugurthine War. Jugurtha, grandson of Massinissa of Numidia, had claimed the entire kingdom of Numidia in defiance of Roman decrees dividing it between several members of the royal family. Rome declared war on Jugurtha in 111 BC, but for five years the wily king frustrated all efforts to bring him to heel. Finally, in 106 the popular general Marius was assigned command, with Sulla as quaestor in charge of cavalry. Before Marius could take to the field against the enemy, however, Sulla arranged with his ally Bocchus of Mauretania to have Jugurtha ambushed and captured. Sulla was acclaimed for the bloodless end of the war, gaining his first victory and the eternal enmity of Marius. On the reverse of this coin, Bocchus offers an olive branch to a seated Sulla, with a bound Jugurtha kneeling beside him. Plutarch tells us that Sulla had this scene engraved on a signet ring that he used from that time forward, and we may assume that the coin design must be copied from Sulla’s ring.