CNG 93, Lot: 1150. Estimate $50000. Sold for $47500. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Clodius Macer. Usurper, AD 68. AR Denarius (17mm, 3.64 g, 12h). Carthage mint. L CLODIVS · MACER, bare head right; C S across field / PRO/PRAE above, AFRICAE below, galley right, with eleven pairs of oars and seven oarsmen. Manhattan Sale 3 (3 January 2012), lot 173 (same obv. die); cf. RIC I 34-7 (for type); BMCRE p. 285 note; cf. A. Gara, "La Monetazione di Clodius Macer," RIN (1970), p. 67, 7 and plate 1, 11-12 (for type); cf. Hewitt 50-7 (unpublished dies); RSC 13a. Near EF, toned. Great metal for issue. Exceptional portrait. Extremely rare, particularly with the “S C” reversed.

Ex Property of Princeton Economics acquired by Martin Armstrong (Classical Numismatic Group Electronic Auction 271, 11 January 2012), lot 66 (sold for hammer $75,000, but not paid); Classical Numismatic Group 46 (24 June 1998), lot 1186.

Clodius Macer served as legatus Augusti propraetore Africae under Nero. As opposition to the emperor grew and the power of the central government dwindled, Macer acted as little more than a pirate, sweeping the north African coast in an attempt to increase his power by cutting into the grain supplies of Rome. Following Nero’s suicide in early June, he began striking denarii in his own name. All of Macer’s coins are of rather crude style, an indication of the lack of skilled die engravers and the haste at which they were produced. K.V. Hewitt (“The coinage of L. Clodius Macer (AD 68),” NC [1983], pp. 64-80) estimated the output of Macer’s coinage to have been in the range of 1 to 1½ million denarii. The vast majority of coins, however, would have been melted down in antiquity, and Hewitt knew of only 71 total denarii in the name of Macer at the time of his study.