127, Lot: 252. Estimate $1500. Sold for $1600. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

NERO. 54-68 AD. Æ Sestertius (36mm, 28.33 g, 7h). Lugdunum (Lyon) mint. Struck 65 AD. Laureate head left, with globe at point of bust / Nero on horseback right, holding spear; behind him rides a soldier carrying a vexillum. RIC I 437; WCN 425; BMCRE -; Cohen 84. Nice VF, glossy olive green patina, minor porosity on bust.

The decursio was a military training exercise which acquired ceremonial pageantry. The decursio Troiae was a specifically equestrian event and may have been connected to the earlier Republican transvectio equitum, a ceremony Augustus reinstituted. A similar decursio appears on the base of the Column of Antoninus Pius.