Sale: CNG 67, Lot: 1532. Estimate $400.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 22 September 2004.  Sold For $400. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

ANTONINUS PIUS. 138-161 AD. Æ Sestertius (22.98 gm). Struck 145-161 AD. Laureate head right / Felicitas standing facing, head left, holding capricorn and long winged caduceus. RIC III 770; BMCRE 1677; Cohen 363. Good VF, glossy red-brown patina, light smoothing. ($400)

From the Michael Weller Collection.

The standard depiction of Felicitas shows her holding a caduceus and a cornucopiae, attributes of the good fortune denoted by her name. Our coin, however, clearly shows her holding in addition to the caduceus, a capricorn. According to Suetonius, Augustus had been born while the moon was in the sign of Capricorn. Seeing this as a sign of his great destiny, he associated the symbol closely with himself by striking it on coins and incorporating it into numerous works of art, so that it became a standard part of the imperial iconography. In order to legitimize their own claims, his successors periodically employed the capricorn imagery.

As Rome approached its nine-hundredth anniversary as a city, it was also celebrating over a century-and-a-half of imperial rule. Since the peace and prosperity of Antoninus Pius' rule was the direct result of Augustus' establishment of the Principate, it was quite logical to replace the cornucopiae of Felicitas with a capricorn, as our coin shows, since good fortune ultimately came from the emperor.