Sale: CNG 63, Lot: 1245. Estimate $1500.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 21 May 2003.  Sold For $1700. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

NERO. 54-68 AD. Æ Sestertius (28.28 gm). Struck 64 AD. Laureate head left / Nero on horseback right, holding spear; behind him rides a soldier carrying a vexillum. RIC I 171; Cohen 84. Nice VF, glossy olive green patina, minor porosity on bust. ($1500)

The decursio was a military training exercise which acquired ceremonial pageantry. The decursio Troiae was a specifically equestrian event and may have been connected to the earlier Republican transvectio equitum, a ceremony Augustus reinstituted. A similar decursio appears on the base of the Column of Antoninus Pius.