From the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum

Sale: Triton XI, Lot: 891. Estimate $20000.  Closing Date: Monday, 7 January 2008.  Sold For $24000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Claudius. AD 41-54. AV Aureus (7.79 g, 3h). Rome mint. Struck AD 44-45. TI CLAVD • CAESAR • AVG • P • M • TR • P • IIII, laureate head right / Battlemented wall inscribed IMPER. RECEPT enclosing praetorian camp in which Fides Praetorianorum stands left, holding spear in right hand, aquila before him; behind, a pediment with fortified flanking walls. RIC I 25; von Kaenel type 21 (V-/R321 [unrecorded obv. die]); Calicó 361; BMCRE 23; BN 43-4 (Lugdunum mint). EF, lustrous. Well centered and struck. Attractive compact portrait.

Ex Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection (Sotheby’s, 10 November 1972), lot 35.

Claudius was the first of many emperors to be raised to that office by the Praetorian Guard. This reverse type depicting the praetorian camp, which lay north-east of Rome outside the Servian Wall, celebrates the event.