80, Lot: 148. Estimate $1000. Sold for $1200. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

TRAJAN. 98-117 AD. Æ Sestertius (34mm, 24.43 gm). Struck 104-107 AD. Laureate bust right, slight drapery / Danuvius, with cloak floating in arch behind his head and drapery falling away from his thighs and thrown out to the right, kneeling left, pressing down with his right knee a draped female figure (Dacia), seated right on ground: with his right hand he grips Dacia by the throat, in his left hand he holds a reed: Dacia rests her right hand on ground and with her left grips the right arm of Danuvius. RIC II 556 var (draped); BMC 796 (same). Good VF, some porosity, brown surfaces. An exceptionally artistic reverse.

BMCRE refers to the reverse male figure as Danuvius; RIC calls him Tiber. In any case the type is exceptional artistically as well as typologically. One wonders what role either river may have played in Trajan's conquest of Dacia.