Search


CNG Bidding Platform

Information

Products and Services



Research Coins: Electronic Auction

 
63, Lot: 72. Estimate $500.
Sold for $395. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

TITUS. 79-81 AD. Æ Sestertius (35mm, 28.51 gm). Struck 80 AD. IMP T CAES VESP AVG P M TR P P P COS VIII, laureate head left / ANNONA AVG, Annona standing left, holding statue of Aequitas and cornucopiae, at left, modius with grain-ears, at right, behind, prow. RIC II 86; BMCRE 153; cf. Cohen 15 (S.C.). Near VF, green patina, lightly smoothed.

Although RIC lists it as a prow, the device behind Annona is, as BMCRE correctly calls it, the stern, or poop of a cargo ship. The goose-head stern decoration as well as the sides of the sterncastle are evident (cf. RIC II, pl. IV, 57). For a further treatment, see Lionel Casson, Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World, 348, and figs. 154, 156.

As for the missing S. C., see RIC 86, note: "The reverse normally omits S. C.; Cohen 14, 15 quotes with S. C., probably in error."