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Banner Artemide LVII
A charming portrait of Augustus
Lot # 455
Augustus (27 BC - 14 AD). AV Aureus. Lugdunum mint, 2 BC - 12 AD. Obv. CAESAR AVGVSTVS DIVI F PATER PATRIAE. Laureate head right. Rev. C L CAESARES (in exergue) AVGVSTI F COS DESIG PRINC IVVENT. Gaius and Lucius Caesar, on left and right, standing facing, each togate and resting a hand on one of two shields set on ground between them; behind the shields, two spears; above, on left, simpulum right, and on right, lituus left. RIC I (2nd ed.) 206; C. 42; Calicó 176. AV. 7.86 g. 19.50 mm. RR. A choice example, sharply struck on a broad flan. A superb idealized portrait. Good EF.
Ex Ratto Fixed price list March 1969 lot 4.
After the death of his favorite nephew Marcellus. Augustus turned his hopes for the succession to the young Gaius and Lucius Caesars, his grandsons via his daughter Julia and his close friend Marcus Agrippa. Gaius was born in 20 BC and Lucius three years later. Augustus formally adopted them both and gave them an accelerated progress up the cursus honorum, or ladder of public offices. There are hints that being showered with honors and adulation may have gone to their heads, but history will never know whether their reigns would have been superior to what did come after Augustus, for they both suffered untimely ends. Lucius fell ill during a state visit to Gaul and died in Massalia in AD 2. Two years later, Gaius suffered a wound during a skirmish with the Parthians on the eastern frontier and died in Lycia.
(Heritage 3032,2014,23537 note).