GOLDEN

Issue: 119-122 AD, D/ IMP CAESAR TRAIAN HADRIANVS AVG, laureate head r., R/ PM TR
P COS III, Hercules with club in r. hand, and apples in l. hand, facing, slightly to
r., inside a distyle temple. Below lying l. the personification of a River, Ref. Bibl. R.I.C. 56/R2; Cohen 1083/Fr.150; Calico 1320; BMC III No. 98 in note as a variant; Metal: AV, gr. 7.37, Dia.: mm. 19. mBB.

PROVENANCE
Count Alessandro Magnaguti Collection, Mantua;
Santamaria P. & P., EX NVMMIS HISTORIA - Conte Alessandro Magnaguti Collection, Vol. III, Roman coins of Trajan and Hadrian and their families, Rome, 26-28/6/1950, n. 189;
Numismatica Ars Classica 25, Zurich, 25/6/2003, n. 451;
Triton VII, New York, 13-14/1/2004, n. 923;
Gorny & Mosch 236, München, 7/3/2016, no. 448;
Italian private collection.


Below is an extract from the report of Umberto Moruzzi n. 9361 dated Rome, 11/22/2022, attached to this lot:


… The coin is extremely rare, as it is not present in the medal collections of the main Italian and European collections. The typological reference is due to Cohen, who mentions it in n. 1083, and refers to a specimen in a private collection of Jean-Baptiste Jules Charvet (1824-1882).


A similar specimen is kept in the Roman National Museum, coming from the Gnecchi Collection; in reality it would seem to be rather the type listed by Cohen at no. 1084, which substantially differs in the further presence on the reverse of two female figures accompanying Hercules.


The reference publication cited above, The Roman Aurei Catalogue, by X. Calicò E., Barcelona 2003, bears only the image of this specimen.


At international auctions over the past twenty-two years, this coin appears in the aforementioned sales and another example, sold by Stack's Bowers Galleries January 2013 N.Y.I.N.C. no. 5014. in clearly inferior conservation, but certainly minted from the same mints.


The typology of the reverse of this rare coin seems to have a personal reference, the Hercules of Gades, patron saint of Spain, the province where the families of Trajan and Hadrian had settled generations earlier. His mother, Domitia Paulina, came from Gades, a rich city, which was certainly the oldest city in Spain and considered by many to be the oldest Phoenician settlement in the west. Although the precise meaning of the type is not known, it may refer to the dedication of a temple of Hercules of Gades on the banks of the Tiber.


There are three main types which commemorate this event: the type shown here, another similar one, but with Hercules accompanied by two nymphs, and a third showing Hercules standing beside the river god Tiber and at the prow of a ship. The latter type bears the additional inscription HERC GADIT, which seems to offer conclusive proof, that the series refers specifically to Hercules of Gades. …










The coin offered in this lot has been declared an archaeological find of cultural interest particularly important pursuant to articles 10, c. 4, lit. b) and 13 of Legislative Decree 42/2004, as per the Decree of the Regional Commission for the Cultural Heritage of Piedmont n. 195 del 12/10/2018.

The present lot cannot be exported from Italy.