Sale: CNG 64, Lot: 1058. Estimate $2000.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 24 September 2003.  Sold For $1870. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

HADRIAN. 117-138 AD. Æ Sestertius (28.28 gm). Struck circa 119 AD. Laureate bust right, slight drapery on left shoulder / LIBERTAS RESTITVTA, Hadrian seated left on platform, greeting female holding small child with another at her feet. RIC II 568; Cohen 949. Good VF, brown patina, minor roughness on reverse. ($2000)

The reverse type of this sestertius commemorates either Hadrian's cancellation of public debts or the continuation of Trajan's Italian orphan-relief policies, and thus a "restoration of liberty."

As emperors often employed LIBERTAS as a revese type to juxtapose their own more "constitutional" aspirations against the tyrannical rule of their predecessors, Hadrian's use of it seems inappropriate, since his predecessor was Trajan, an emperor whose name had become a by-word for a just and fair ruler. Trajan had been so diligent in supporting the capital by continuing Nerva's charitable policies and constructing the greatest of the imperial fora, as well as expanding the empire by conquering Dacia and Mesopotamia, that the Senate granted him the official title Optimus Princeps in 114 AD. Hadrian himself did not enjoy the same Senatorial popularity; he removed Roman authority in some of the areas Trajan had conquered, accrued to himself some powers traditionally held by the Senate, and executed four ex-consuls in 118 AD. Moreover, according to the later Historia Augusta, he was the first emperor to use frumentarii, or official spies, to investigate his family and friends.