Sale: CNG 69, Lot: 1537. Estimate $750.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 8 June 2005.  Sold For $600. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

NERO. 54-68 AD. Æ Sestertius (27.06 gm, 6h). Rome mint. Struck 64 AD. Laureate bust right, wearing aegis / Nero on horseback left, holding spear; behind him, soldier on horseback holding vexillum. RIC I 165; BMCRE 148; Cohen 91. VF, dark green and brown patina, minor roughness. ($750)

From the Rudolf Berk Collection. Ex Stack's (14-15 June 1971), lot 415.

The decursio was a military training exercise which acquired ceremonial pageantry. The decursio Troiae was a specifically equestrian event and may have been connected to the earlier Republican transvectio equitum, a ceremony Augustus reinstituted. A similar decursio appears on the base of the Column of Antoninus Pius.