353, Lot: 400. Estimate $150. Sold for $250. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Moneyer issues of Imperatorial Rome. L. Papius Celsus. 45 BC. AR Denarius (17mm, 4.15 g, 1h). Rome mint. Head of Juno Sospita right, wearing goat skin / She-wolf standing right, placing stick on fire; to right, eagle standing left, fanning flames. Crawford 472/1; CRI 82; Sydenham 964; Papia 2. Good VF, toned. Well struck for this scarcer issue.

From Sear (CRI p. 52): “L. Papius Celsus is known only from his coinage though it seems likely that he was the son of the Lucius Papius who had held the office of moneyer about three and a half decades before (cf. Crawford 384). Both moneyers indicated their origin by the depiction of Juno Sospita, the goddess clad in a goat’s skin, who was especially sacred to the inhabitants of Lanuvium (modern Lanuvio), an ancient city in the Alban Hills about twenty miles south-east of Rome. Celsus’ coinage has other Lanuvine types: the girl feeding a snake, which relates to an annual ceremony in which a young virgin descended into the grotto below the temple of Juno Sospita to feed the sacred serpent; and the she-wolf and eagle kindling a fire, which appears to illustrate the legend of the foundation of the city as recorded by Dionysius of Halicarnassus in his Roman Antiquities (i. 59) written during the reign of Augustus.”