LEG I ITAL

442, Lot: 345. Estimate $200. Sold for $360. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Gallienus. AD 253-268. Antoninianus (21mm, 2.48 g, 6h). Mediolanum (Milan) mint. Issue 2(2), AD 260-1. GALLIENVS AVG, radiate and cuirassed bust right / / LEG I ITAL V P V F, boar standing right. MIR 36, 985n; RIC V –; Cunetio –. VF, toned, faint porosity, deposits.

Ex Lanz 114 (26 May 2003), lot 684.

All legionary antoniniani with V P V F reverses are very rare. MIR records two specimens of LEG I ITAL, the illustrated piece being in the collections of the British Museum. King (1984, Pl. 1, no. 1) illustrates another specimen, from the Gibraltar hoard, and Thiry (2008, 74) states that this hoard had contained two specimens from the same die pairing, previously recorded by Jean-Marc Doyen in his unpublished thesis. Another example, again from the same reverse die, formed lot no. v43_0602 in the CGB, Paris, auction Monnaies 43, 29 April 2010. This coin was illustrated by Thiry (2008) as Fig. 4 on page 69. It is from the same reverse die as the other three coins, and it seems likely that only one die was used to strike coins of this type. Legio I Italica was first recruited by Nero in AD 66, with the intention of sending it east to bolster the frontier with Parthia. All of its men were supposed to be at least six (Roman) feet tall, and Nero reportedly called it “the Phalanx of Alexander the Great.” Sent into Gaul to in AD 68 suppress the rebellion of Vindex, it arrived too late for battle, but ended up declaring its support for Vitellius, governor of Germany, the following year. I Italica helped Vitellius win the First Battle of Bedriacum in the Spring of AD 69, but lost the Second battle to the forces of Vespasian in the fall of that year. After this it was stationed at Novae in Moesia, near modern Svistov, Bulgaria, where it was fully engaged in the frontier wars of the next two centuries, earning the additional epithets Felix Victrix Pia Semper Ubique (”Fortunate, Victorious, and Dutiful Always, Everywhere”). The Notitia Dignitatum still records its presence at Novae early in the fifth century AD.