Sale: Triton VI, Lot: 849. Estimate $5000.  Closing Date: Monday, 13 January 2003.  Sold For $4250. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

DOMITIAN. 81-96 AD. AV Aureus (7.69 gm). Struck 92-94 AD. DOMITIANVS AVGVSTVS, laureate head right / GERMANICVS COS XVI, Germania seated right on shield, mourning; broken spear below. RIC II 184; BMCRE 211; BN 187; Cohen 163. Good VF. (See color enlargement on plate 12.) ($5000) 

From the William H. Williams Collection. 

Domitian pursued military actions in Germany and Dacia in an effort to shorten Rome's frontier with the barbarian tribes to the East. Success was only achieved by Domitian’s formidable successor, Trajan, yet such competent strategic efforts by Domitian run counter to the typical derogatory bias found in the ancient authors concerning Domitian's reign. This coin, commemorating Rome's "victory" over the Germans, suggests more hopeful speculation than any concrete reality.

This magnificent reverse provides us with a record of part of a monument which has entirely disappeared, but of which fragments may survive at Rome beneath Regiones VII to X where Domitian’s architectural remains tend to cluster. Taken together with the Tropaeum Domitiani de Germanis monument, with its German male captive (Carradice, Coinage and finances in the reign of Domitian, BAR 178, 1983, pp. 24ff, 84.3), we can assemble the missing pieces into a standing marble trophy flanked by two seated captives, one male, bound and struggling, the other female, submissive and mourning for her lost liberty.