Armenia Capta – Calicó Plate Coin – Ex Biaggi Collection

Sale: Triton XI, Lot: 716. Estimate $15000.  Closing Date: Monday, 7 January 2008.  Sold For $77500. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Augustus. 27 BC-AD 14. AV Aureus (8.04 g, 12h). Pergamum mint. Struck 19 BC. AVGVSTVS, bare head right / ARMENIA above, CAPTA in exergue, Victory, draped, wings spread, kneeling right on the back of a bull, recumbent on ground right, grasping the bull’s head and turning its horns. RIC I 514; Calicó 160 (this coin illustrated); BMCRE 671 = BMCRR East 308; BN 977-8; Biaggi 82 (this coin). Good VF, a few minor field marks. Very rare.

Ex Gilbert Steinberg Collection (Numismatica Ars Classica, 16 November 1994), lot 144; Nelson Bunker Hunt Collection (Part III, Sotheby’s New York, 4 December 1990), lot 68; Biaggi Collection, 82.

The eastern part of the Roman empire had long proved a difficult region to control. In 53 BC, Crassus was killed at Carrhae and his legions destroyed, with their prized legionary standards captured by the Parthians. The limits of Roman might were severely tested. Keeping Armenia free from Parthian domination was of great importance to Augustus. When the Armenians asked for Rome’s help in ridding them of Artaxes in favor of Tigranes, Augustus sent Tiberius to deal with the matter. In the event, the Armenians themselves removed Artaxes, Tiberius arriving late to be of little aid. However, the Romans, always ready to use propaganda to their advantage, treated this ‘victory’ as a monumental diplomatic triumph. Tiberius “put on a lordly air, especially after sacrifices had been offered up to commemorate the event, as though he had accomplished something by martial prowess” (Dio, LIV. 9).

Prideaux suggests that the reverse iconography and consequent interpretation should be reexamined. The type is generally described as Victory cutting the throat of a recumbent bull, without any explanation of this weird and unusual scene. However, a close inspection reveals that the scene does not depict an act of throat cutting, nor any knife in Victory’s hand. Instead, Victory is mastering the bull by holding and turning its horns, as some famous wrestler is said to have done in an arena. The significance of this would have been obvious to the soldiers, citizens, or anyone else handling or viewing the coin. The scene should be correctly interpreted as the Romans’ mastering of the Taurus mountain range, the natural and formidable barrier beyond which Armenia was thought to have been out of reach and secure.