From the John Whitney Walter Collection

Sale: Triton XI, Lot: 894. Estimate $10000.  Closing Date: Monday, 7 January 2008.  Sold For $12000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Nero. AD 54-68. AV Aureus (7.35 g, 6h). Rome mint. Struck AD 64-65. NERO CAESAR AVGVSTVS, laureate head right / IVPPITER CVSTOS, Jupiter seated left, holding thunderbolt in right hand, scepter in left. RIC I 52; WCN 25; Calicó 412; BMCRE 67; BN 213-9. Superb EF, underlying luster, small mark on cheek. Fine style, and extremely well struck from fresh dies.

Ex John Whitney Walter Collection (Stack’s, 29 November 1990), lot 26 (enlarged on pp. 15 and 66); Leu 38 (13 May 1986), lot 239.

This reverse type commemorates the protection of Nero from the Pisonian Conspiracy. Events of the years 64-65 AD defined the subsequent reputation of Nero as a cruel and self-indulgent ruler. His "excesses" resulted in a conspiracy to overthrow and replace him with Gaius Calpurnius Piso. Among the conspirators were many high-ranking members of Nero's court including Seneca the Younger, the poet Lucan, and Petronius, who called himself Nero's "arbiter of elegance." To Nero, the failure of a conspiracy made up of those so close to him could have been achieved only through divine intervention. As the king of the Gods oversaw the security of the Roman state, Nero believed it was Jupiter the Guardian (Custos) who had saved him from harm.