62, Lot: 82. Estimate $100. Sold for $72. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

NERO. 54-68 AD. AR Denarius (17mm, 2.94 gm). Struck 64-65 AD. Laureate head right / Jupiter seated left. RIC I 53; RSC 119. Toned Fine, test cuts on edge.

This reverse type commemorates the protection of Nero from the Pisonian Conspiracy. The years 64-65 AD were those in which events defined the subsequent reputation of Nero as a cruel and self-indulgent ruler. In 64 AD, a large section of the city of central Rome burned; Nero's reputed singing of the destruction of Troy during the fire led to the later association of him "fiddling." Out of the charmed remains of the city's near center, Nero constructed the Domus Aurea, or Golden House, so named because of the guilded tiles on its exterior. Covering the area east of the Forum and up the Esquiline, it included a man-made lake and a large guilded statue of himself. Vespasian later constructed an amphitheater and the nearby colossus of Nero would lend its name to the new structure. Nero's "excesses" resulted in a conspiracy to overthrow Nero and replace him with Gaius Calpurnius Piso. Among the conspirators were many high-ranking members of Nero's court including Seneca the Younger, the poet Lucan, and Petronius, Nero's self-styled "arbiter of elegance."