The Partner of My Labors

Sale: Triton X, Lot: 563. Estimate $500.  Closing Date: Monday, 8 January 2007.  Sold For $2000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Tiberius. AD 14-37. Æ As (10.84 g, 6h). Bilbilis mint. L. Aelius Sejanus, praetorian consul. Struck AD 31. TI • CAESAR • DIVI • AVGVSTI • F • AVGVSTVS•, laureate head right / MV (ligate) • AV(ligate)GVSTA • BILBILIS • TI • CÆSARE • V [L ÆL]IO • [SEIAN]O, large COS within wreath. RPC I 398; NAH 1079-80; SNG Copenhagen 620. Good VF, green patina with orange overtones, minor smoothing. Important historical type with the name of Sejanus removed in damnatio memoriae.

Ex Classical Numismatic Group 70 (21 September 2005), lot 531.

Lucius Aelius Sejanus came from an up-and-coming equestrian family. He was the son of Lucius Seius Strabo, Tiberius' praefectus praetorio; his brother, Lucius Seius Turbo, was suffect consul in 18 AD; and he could claim kinship through his mother to Maecenas, Augustus' advisor. Early in his career, Sejanus served with Augustus' grandson Gaius in the east, and may have accompanied Drusus Caesar north to quell the mutinies that broke out upon Augustus' death. Initially he had been his father's colleague as praefectus praetorio, but when Strabo was promoted to the more prestigious post of praefectus Aegypti, Sejanus retained sole command of the Guard, a post which, according to later historians, he used to his advantage. Consolidating the Praetorians in a permanent encampment at the eastern edge of the city, he used the Guard to increase his power and influence over Tiberius. In 23 AD, upon the death of Drusus Caesar, Sejanus proposed marrying Drusus' widow Livilla, with whom he was allegedly having an affair. So indispensable had he become in maintaining order in the capital that Tiberius called him "the partner of my labors," a position that Sejanus carefully built upon following the emperor's retirement to Capri in 26 AD. Using the emperor's absence to his advantage, Sejanus imprisoned Germanicus' widow, Agrippina Senior, her sons Nero and Drusus Caesars, and their supporters on charges of treason. In 31 AD Sejanus was consul with Tiberius – the first step, he hoped, to acquiring tribunician power and becoming the imperial heir. At the height of this power, however, Sejanus fell, when Tiberius, made aware of Sejanus' machinations, condemned his consular colleague in a letter to the Senate. Harsh reprisals against Sejanus and his adherents followed, including the removal of his name from public monuments as well as this coin.