Sale: Triton XII, Lot: 590. Estimate $7500.  Closing Date: Monday, 5 January 2009.  Sold For $13500. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Domitian. AD 81-96. AV Aureus (7.66 g, 6h). Rome mint. Struck AD 92-94. DOMITIANVS AVGVSTVS, bare head right / GERMANICVS, COS XVI in exergue, emperor in quadriga left, holding branch in right hand and scepter in left; car decorated with Victory crowning trophy with wreath. RIC II 749; Calicó 852; BMCRE 213; BN 190. Good VF, underlying luster.

Ex Triton VII (12 January 2004), lot 906.

Domitian always stood in the shadow of his father and elder brother. Vespasian and Titus had been heaped with military and civic honors throughout their long and distinguished careers. When he became emperor in AD 81, Domitian sought to gain the glory that would equal or exceed that his father and brother had won in the Jewish War, and launched a series of moderately successful campaigns against the Germans and Dacians. This aureus proclaims him as Germanicus, a title he had assumed about a decade earlier, and serves as a memoir of his triumph in 89 AD.