German Victories

Sale: CNG 82, Lot: 1002. Estimate $10000.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 16 September 2009.  Sold For $10500. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Domitian. AD 81-96. AV Aureus (7.59 g, 6h). Rome mint. Struck AD 92-94. Bare head right / Domitian in quadriga left, holding branch and scepter. RIC II 749; Calicó 853. Good VF, a short, light scratch on reverse. Bold portrait.

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 AD 89.