LEG XXX

442, Lot: 419. Estimate $200. Sold for $220. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Gallienus. AD 253-268. Antoninianus (21.5mm, 2.81 g, 7h). Mediolanum (Milan) mint. Issue 2(2), AD 260-1. GALLIENVS AVG, radiate and cuirassed bust right / LEG XX[X VLP] VI P VI F, Neptune standing right, holding trident and dolphin. MIR 36, 1024r; RIC V (joint reign) 368; Cunetio 1478. VF, toned, some silver content, some reverse poroisty.

Bought from Manton Associates, 1992.

Legio XXX Ulpia Victrix was raised by the Emperor Trajan circa AD 101 in preparation for his Dacian Wars, receiving Trajan’s family name of Ulpia. Its performance during those wars won the additional epithet Victrix (”Victorious”). After Trajan’s eastern campaign of AD 116-117, it was was stationed in Pannonia under the command of Quintus Marcus Turbo, a close friend of the Emperor Hadrian. Early in Hadrian’s reign it was relocated to Vetera (modern Xanten) in Lower Germany, which became its permanent base for the next 200 years. XXX Ulpia worked closely with its sister legion, I Minervia, in constructing fortifications and civic facilities along the Rhine frontier, leaving a long trail of inscriptions for modern researchers to study. Like several other legions named on the coins of Gallienus, XXX Ulpia is known to have backed the breakaway Gallo-Roman Empire of Postumus circa AD 260-273, although a significant detachment (or vexillation) of the legion likely remained loyal to the “legitimate” regime and formed part of Gallienus’s central reserve army stationed at Milan. The last record of XXX Ulpia suggests that a detachment fought in the east against the Persians at the siege of Amida, circa AD 360. After this, the Thirtieth disappears from history. Its symbols were Capricorn and Neptune.