263, Lot: 307. Estimate $500. Sold for $2011. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Claudius. AD 41-54. AR Denarius (18mm, 3.41 g, 3h). Rome mint. Struck AD 46-47. Laureate head right / DE BRITANN on architrave of triumphal arch surmounted by equestrian statue left between two trophies. RIC I 34; von Kaenel Type 27; RSC 18. VF, porous.

Ex Classical Numismatic Group 76 (12 September 2007), lot 1387.


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)