Commemorating His Victory Over the Germans
Commodus Appointed Augustus

Triton XVIII, Lot: 1122. Estimate $2000. Sold for $3000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Marcus Aurelius. AD 161-180. Æ Sestertius (33mm, 22.40 g, 12h). Liberalitas issue. Rome mint. Struck AD 176-177. M ANTONINVS AVG GERM SARM TR P XXXI, laureate head right / LIBERALITAS AVG VII IMP VIII COS III P P, S C across field, Liberalitas standing facing, head left, holding abacus in right hand and cornucopia in left. RIC III 1205; MIR 18, 381-6/30; Banti 215; BMCRE 1610. Near EF, natural hard green patina, small flan split. Struck on a broad flan.

Following his success in the First Marcomannic War and his suppression of Avidius Cassius, Marcus Aurelius returned to Rome for the first time in eight years. While there, he appointed his son, Commodus, as co-Augustus and on 23 December AD 176 celebrated a joint triumph over the Germans and the Sarmatians, at which time the distribution, commemorated on this sestertius, occurred. This time in Rome was to be his last, for in AD 177, the treaty with the Germans was broken by the Quadi, and Marcus was compelled to return to the front. The following lot (lot 1123), which proclaims his safe journey from the front and back again, is particularly ironic: Marcus never again would return from the front, save for the return of his ashes for burial in the Mausoleum of Hadrian, and Rome would experience the erratic and maniacal rule of Commodus.