Sale: Triton XI, Lot: 696. Estimate $15000.  Closing Date: Monday, 7 January 2008.  Sold For $20000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Augustus. 27 BC-AD 14. AV Aureus (7.99 g, 7h). Rome mint. P. Petronius Turpilianus, moneyer. Struck 19/8 BC. CAESAR AVGVSTVS, head right, wearing oak wreath / P • PETRON • TVRPILIAN • III • VIR •, four-string lyre, made from a tortoise shell. RIC I 293; Calicó 148; cf. BMCRE p. 5, note 22 = BMCRR Rome p. 65, note 2; BN 106; CNR 371 (this coin illustrated). Good VF, a few minor marks, some dirt in the devices. Very rare.

Ex Hamburger 96 (25 October 1932), lot 787.

On this issue, Augustus is depicted as wearing an oak wreath, here symbolizing his rescue of the Roman citizens who were prisoners in Parthia. The reverse is a reference to Mercury, equivalent to the Greek Hermes. Mercury created a lyre whose sounding box was made from the shell of a tortoise. Prideaux suggests that this reverse type evokes the recollection of the myth of Proserpina (Greek Persephone), the daughter of Jupiter and Ceres, which would have been well known. As the myth has it, while Persephone was gathering poppies, she was forcibly taken by Pluto down to Hades. The reverse type celebrates Mercury’s role in the plan to have her return to the upper earth for half of each year.