Attractive Anonymous Issue

354, Lot: 524. Estimate $100. Sold for $160. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Anonymous issues. temp. Domitian to Antoninus Pius, AD 81-161. Æ Quadrans (16mm, 2.94 g, 7h). Rome mint. Petasus / Winged caduceus; S C flanking. R. Weigel, “The Anonymous Quadrantes Reconsidered,” in Annotazioni Numismatiche Supplemento XI (1998), 18; RIC II 32; Cohen 36. VF, warm red-brown patina.

The series of Imperial-era anonymous quadrantes portrays eleven deities: Jupiter, Minerva, Roma, Neptune, Tiber, Mars, Venus, Apollo, Mercury, Bacchus/Liber, and Hercules, as well as the Four Seasons. They invariably depict either a portrait on the obverse and an attribute of the deity on the reverse, or otherwise an attribute on either side. These designs appear to be influenced, but not directly copied from, earlier designs of the Republican period.