Bertolami Fine Art
Auction 12 29-30 October 2014
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Augustus (27 BC - AD 14), Aureus, Uncertain (Eastern ?) mint, after 27 BC; AV (g 7,89; mm 19; h 12); CAESAR, bare head r., Rv. AVGVSTVS, heifer slowly pacing l. RIC 538; C 26; Calicò 168; Bahrfeldt 137/6 (same dies); BN pg. 157 (dD/R5); cf. Kent & Hirmer 127 (same reverse die).
Extremely rare, portrait of high artistic merit, extremely fine.
Probably the type of the reverse with the heifer is inspired by one of the bronze statues sculpted by Myron in the fifth century B.C. and that, after the victory of Augustus at Actium, were requisitioned from Athens and sent to Rome by Octavian to decorate an altar, dedicated in 28 BC, in his temple of Apollo on the Palatine. So Propertius in the second book of his Elegies ".... around the altar, there were four oxen carved by Myron, a work of art, which seemed alive." On some coins of Vespasian there is represented the same reverse with the heifer, and in fact the Flavian emperor used statues of Myron to decorate his new temple, dedicated to Pax and completed in 74 AD.
Extremely rare, portrait of high artistic merit, extremely fine.
Probably the type of the reverse with the heifer is inspired by one of the bronze statues sculpted by Myron in the fifth century B.C. and that, after the victory of Augustus at Actium, were requisitioned from Athens and sent to Rome by Octavian to decorate an altar, dedicated in 28 BC, in his temple of Apollo on the Palatine. So Propertius in the second book of his Elegies ".... around the altar, there were four oxen carved by Myron, a work of art, which seemed alive." On some coins of Vespasian there is represented the same reverse with the heifer, and in fact the Flavian emperor used statues of Myron to decorate his new temple, dedicated to Pax and completed in 74 AD.