Sale: Triton XI, Lot: 694. Estimate $1500.  Closing Date: Monday, 7 January 2008.  Sold For $3500. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Augustus. 27 BC-AD 14. AR Denarius (3.96 g, 2h). Rome mint. P. Petronius Turpilianus, moneyer. Struck 19/8 BC. TVRPILIANVS • III • VIR •, head of Liber right, wearing ivy-wreath, hair knotted at back and falling down over neck and left shoulder / CAESAR AVGVSTVS • SIGN RECE, bare-headed Parthian kneeling on right knee right, extending in right hand a signum, to which is attached a vexillum marked X, and holding out left hand below left knee. RIC I 287; RSC 485; BMCRE 10; BN 118-126. EF, attractive, deep toning, traces of iridescence.

This coin commemorates the major diplomatic coup of his reign: the recovery of the Roman standards, lost by Crassus at the battle of Carrhae in 54 BC, from the Parthians. The reference to Liber, who was the Latin equivalent of Dionysus and of eastern origin, is a special mythological allusion to the event and an ad hoc use of such mythology by Augustus that would be later considered unsuitable and discarded from the canon of his public image.