Lovely Bosco Reale Toning

Sale: Triton XI, Lot: 896. Estimate $7500.  Closing Date: Monday, 7 January 2008.  Sold For $24000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Nero. AD 54-68. AV Aureus (7.22 g, 6h). Rome mint. Struck AD 66-67. IMP NERO CAESAR AVGVSTVS, laureate head right / IVPPITER CVSTOS, Jupiter seated left, holding thunderbolt in right hand, scepter in left. RIC I 63; WCN 30; Calicó 413; BMCRE 77; BN 231-2. EF, Bosco Reale toning, underlying luster.

From a North American Collection. Ex Coin Galleries (14 December 2004), lot 33.

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.