Sale: Triton IX, Lot: 1273. Estimate $200.  Closing Date: Monday, 9 January 2006.  Sold For $375. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

[Roman Moneyer Issues] L. Memmius. 109/8 BC. AR Denarius (3.90 g, 9h). Male head right, wearing oak-wreath; mark of value below chin / The Dioscuri standing facing, holding their horses. Crawford 304/1; Sydenham 558; Kestner 2535; BMCRR Italy 643; Memmia 1. VF, toned, attractive, sharp strike. ($200)

From the Harry Strickhausen Collection.

If we moved but once beyond the frail disguise
That is Clotho's joy to spin,
Would we pass the hope of the dream, suddenly strike
The constant mask in the shifting light of eyes?
O seize the threads and cry the order of man
To the ends of the midnight streets!
Castor and Pollux rage in the still skies
Above us, lean erratic on the track,
Slip on the skidding wheels of the Roman night.
Insane and human yet
The hand, the delicate spear, the mask, the lies.

The constant mask in the shifting light of eyes
In its diagram of shapes
Is our disorder; it must be our will.
It is woven to the incomplete disguise.
Where, on the hill, the idiot shepherd sleeps
Our judgments are undone.
The gods are resolved; in them our fortune lies.
Hands of the twins cross, perhaps to kill.
Lost in a spiral past the noonday sun
They move, the invisible ones.
Castor and Pollux rage in the still skies
Burning beyond the sun,
Enter the house of the ways and touch our hands.
And many watch the heavens flame with lies
Who cannot mold or name a star again.
Thus, in a dying fire,
A ruined theater, an old disguise,
I return to seek in grace the guardian minds
And come in a circle back to the failing star,
The night, the common war,
The constant mask in the shifting light of eyes.

Thus we are motionless; our circle lies
Beyond the zodiac. In the light of turning figures on the wheel
Castor and Pollux rage in the still skies.
And silent play the masque they cannot speak
Until the earth is cold. The constant mask in the shifting light of eyes
Is hands, arms in a circle. The hours flail
The dreams, which have one by one revealed
What the stars have not foretold.
And we strangely meet; but only in disguise.