Eleven British Kings Defeated Without Loss
Claudius. AD 41-54. AV Aureus (18mm, 7.72 g, 5h). Rome mint. Struck AD 46-47. TI CLAVD CAESAR AVG P M TR P VI IMP XI, laureate head right / Equestrian statue left on triumphal arch with architrave inscribed DE BRITANN; trophy to left and right. RIC I 33; von Kaenel type 27; Calicó 349. Near EF, underlying luster.
Ex Arthur Bally-Herzog Collection (Münzen und Medaillen 93, 16 December 2003), lot 106; privately purchased from Spink in 1905 for CHF 300.
The Roman Senate voted to erect two triumphal arches to celebrate Claudius' conquest of Britain, one in Gaul and another in Rome. Fragments of the latter still survive. It announces that the arch was erected "by the Roman Senate and the People because he had received the surrender of eleven British kings defeated without loss and brought barbarian peoples beyond the Ocean for the first time under the rule of Rome" (H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae 216; CIL VI, 920)
