Goldberg Coins and Collectibles



Sale 108
 
Lot 194

Vespasian. Gold Aureus (7.36 g), AD 69-79. Judaea Capta Issue. Antioch, AD 72/3. IMP VESPAS AVG P M TRI P P P COS IIII, laureate head of Vespasian left. Rev. PAX AVG-VSTI, Vespasian nude except for cloak floating behind, standing facing, head left, holding spear and raising draped woman (Jewess?) r. wearing a 3-tipped crown, who clasps his right hand with hers. Hendin -; RIC 2, pl. 82, 1550; RPC 1924; BMC 504; Calicó 664 (this coin illus.). A great rarity! This is the plate coin in Calicó and is listed as R2. It is in fact much rarer. Toned. Choice Very Fine. Estimate Value $30,000 - UP
From the S. Moussaieff Collection, This lot has been officially exported from Israel through the Israel Antiquities Authority.
The eight years between AD 66 and 73 had been long and exhausting for Rome indeed. In AD 66, a revolt against Roman rule broke out in Judaea that had the potential to destabilize the Roman East. When Cestius Gallus, the legate of Syria, failed to crush the rebels and suffered the defeat of an entire legion, command of the war was transferred to the general Vespasian. Despite Vespasian's early successes against the rebels in Galilee, the conflict dragged on. It was a tiring, dirty affair, often involving massacre and atrocity on both sides. At the same time, the Jewish and Greek populations that had long lived side by side in the cities of Syria and Judaea fell upon one another. In the spring of AD 68, Vespasian pressed his advance into Judaea proper, systematically capturing rebel strongholds and crushing resistance on his inexorable march towards Jerusalem. Then, the unthinkable happened.

On June 9, AD 68, the increasingly unpopular emperor Nero killed himself in order to escape a potentially worse fate at the hands of his senatorial enemies and Servius Salpicius Galba, the rebel governor of Hispania Tarraconensis. This event sparked the infamous Year of the Four Emperors (AD 69), in which Galba and his rivals, M. Salvius Otho and Aulus Vitellius embroiled the Roman world in bloody civil war as they struggled to claim the imperial purple. Vespasian joined the fray as the fourth imperial claimant and was ultimately successful, his forces crushing the legions of Vitellius at Bedriacum and taking possession of Rome in the late autumn of AD 69.

While all of this chaos was taking place in the West, Vespasian had left his son, Titus, in command in Judaea. Titus continued to prosecute the war against the Jewish rebels and besieged a Jerusalem crowded with refugees in AD 70. After a grueling seven months, bringing the defenders to their knees through starvation, disease and factional conflict, Titus at last stormed the city, plundering the Temple and slaughtering or enslaving many of the survivors. Victory was in Roman hands and in AD 71 Titus embarked for Rome to share in a great triumph with his father. Nevertheless, pockets of Jewish rebels still remained in the countryside to harass the Roman victors. Only in AD 73, after the capture of the Dead Sea fortress of Masada and the mass suicide of its Jewish defenders, was the First Jewish Revolt fully repressed. Rebuilding after years of destruction in both the East and West could begin in earnest.

The present gold aureus struck in AD 72-73 celebrates the much longed-for return of "Augustan Peace" to the Roman Empire. The reverse features Vespasian represented as a spear-wielding hero (this heroic quality is indicated by the emperor's nudity) raising up a female figure wearing a turreted headdress. She is normally described as Tyche (Roman Fortuna), the Greek personification of a city's fortune, but it is somewhat unclear how she should be understood here. On the one hand, she could represent the oikoumene — the entirety of the Greco-Roman world — freed from war by the victories of Vespasian (and Titus). On the other hand, since this coin was struck at Antioch, Tyche here may represent the fortune of that city in its capacity as the capital of the Roman province of Syria. As Judaea was under the jurisdiction of the Syrian legates and the province at large had suffered great upheavals over the course of the First Jewish Revolt, it would have been fitting to advertise the restoration of Syria’s fortune at the conclusion of the war.

A further comment by David Hendin, American Numismatic Society and author of a Guide of Biblical Coins:

Among all of the known coins of Vespasian, the only subjugated men or women depicted are Jews or personifications of Jews in relation to the Roman victory in the Jewish War (66 - 73 AD). Thus this rare coin is almost certainly a local-Antiochean-variation on the Judaea Capta theme, but instead suggesting that this victory was pointing to "The Emperor's Peace."

Mattingly suggests that the kneeling woman is wearing a "crown of towers." If this was true it would suggest that the Jewess was also representing the city goddess of Jerusalem, in her defeat. However, this specimen is better centered and better struck than the RIC specimen and the crown appears to have three pointed tips rather than three rectangular towers as usually seen related to a city goddess figure.
 
Realized $72,000



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