Sale: Triton VI, Lot: 1160. Estimate $15000.  Closing Date: Monday, 13 January 2003.  Sold For $22000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

VALENTINIAN III. 425-455 AD. AV Solidus (4.29 gm). Struck 437-438 AD. Thessalonica mint. D N PLA VALENTI-NIANVS P F AVG, diademed and helmeted, draped and cuirassed bust right / FELICITER NVBTIIS, wedding scene with Theodosius II standing facing in center, his hands on the shoulders of Valentinian III and his daughter Licinia Eudoxia; all three nimbate-crowned and wearing ornate marriage robes; COMOB. RIC X -; DOCLR -; Depeyrot -. EF. Extremely rare. (See color enlargement on plate 18.) ($15,000) 

We are aware of only five specimens, including the present piece, of this unpublished type. Three of the other known specimens have appeared in auction, all from the same dies as the present example, and it appears likely that only one set of dies was prepared to strike this special celebratory issue. The three pieces which have previously appeared in auction are as follows: 1) Tkalec (29 February 2000), lot 452=Triton V (15-16 January 2002); 2) Tkalec (19 February 2001), lot 432; and 3) Numismatica Genevensis II (18 November 2002), lot 151.After Galla Placidia's falling out with Honorius, the young Valentinian accompanied his mother and sister to exile at the court of his cousin, Theodosius II, at Constantinople. The eastern attitude toward Valentinian changed in 423, when the usurper Johannes seized power in the west. Valentinian was first reaffirmed as Nobilissimus in 423/424, named Caesar in 424, and, in the same year, betrothed to his cousin Licinia Eudoxia, the daughter of Theodosius II. In 425 he was proclaimed Augustus at Rome, and in 437 he returned to Constantinople for his marriage. The wedding, on 29 October, was a great state occasion. Flavius Merobaudes, the 5th century poet and rhetorician and the official laureate of Valentinian III and Aëtius, describes that in the palace at Ravenna a series of mosaic pictures, now lost, depicted the occasion and the sequence of events that had led up to it. The mosaics showed the "exile" of Valentinian at Constantinople with Galla Placidia, his appeal to Theodosius, his restoration by the eastern government, and his betrothal to Licinia Eudoxia. They further showed the baby daughter of the young couple, born probably in 438 and baptised in infancy. Dominating the composition, however, in the middle of the ceiling, was the Emperor Theodosius and his wife Eudocia, "like the bright stars of the heavens on high." It left no doubt which was the senior court, pre-eminent in power and authority.The mintmark COMOB probably stands for Comes Obryzi, the ‘Count of Gold’ or official in charge of official gold supplies for the western mints such as Thessalonica, where the imperial couple spent the winter of 437-438.