Triton XVII, Lot: 629. Estimate $1000. Sold for $1600. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Augustus. 27 BC-AD 14. AR Denarius (19mm, 3.82 g, 6h). Lugdunum (Lyon) mint. Struck 15-13 BC. AVGVSTVS DIVI • F, bare head right / IMP • X in exergue, Augustus, bareheaded and togate, seated left on curule chair set on daïs, extending his right hand toward two soldiers, each carrying parazonium and presenting laurel branches in their right hands. RIC I 165a; Lyon 13; RSC 133; BMCRE 445-6 = BMCRR Gaul 157-8; BN 1366-9. Near EF, underlying luster, small banker’s mark on neck. Well struck on a broad flan.

Harold Mattingly (BMC I p. cxv) identifies the two soldiers as “...Tiberius and Nero Drusus, the conquerors of Rhaetia in B.C. 15; the branches are the triumphal laurels. The fact that a simplified form of the type with one warrior only occurs is hardly against this.”