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Research Coins: Electronic Auction

 
67, Lot: 132. Estimate $150.
Sold for $105. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

GORDIAN III. 238-244 AD. Æ Sestertius (30mm, 15.55 gm). Struck 242-243 AD. Laureate, draped, and cuirassed bust right / Emperor in military dress standing right, holding transverse spear and globe. RIC IV 307a; Cohen 267. VF, black patina.

Issued while Rome was engaged in war with Sasanian Persia and its king, Shapur I. Although Gordian's assumption of the fifth tribunician power can be assigned to 242-243 AD, the events of the war argue to later in that period. In 243 Gordian III joined his army in upper Mesopotamia, but during that same year one of the two praetorian prefects, the emperor's father-in-law Timesitheus, died of an illness. The surviving prefect, Gaius Julius Priscus, convinced the emperor to appoint his brother Marcus Julius Philippus as Timesitheus' successor; soon Philip would also succeed Gordian.