Artistic portrait sestertii of the 12 Caesars have been exceedingly scarce recently. Many that are available are either overly smoothed, or even worse, tooled. So I feel fortunate that I was able to acquire the final Titus bronze I needed for my set of Titus 12 Caesars portraits (as/dupondius, sestertius, denarius, aureus) at the recent NAC auction: TITUS Caesar 69 - 79 A.D. AE Sestertius 26.19 g. Rome 74 A.D. RIC Vespasian 739 T CAES VESPASIAN IMP PON TR POT COS III CENS Laureate head r. Rev. S – C Spes advancing l., holding flower in r. and raising skirt with left I'm especially pleased with the quality of the obverse portrait on this coin, its fairly complete legend, and a decent reverse (although the reverse does show somewhat of a flat strike especially in the head and high points of Spes). This leaves on one remaining sestertius to complete my 12 Caesars -- Tiberius -- who is very rare on a portrait (lifetime, not posthumous) sestertius. So, incomplete though it may be, I thought it might be interesting to post a group portrait of my 12 Caesars sestertii (note that Julius Caesar and Otho never minted official portrait bronzes during their reigns): Left-to-right, top-to-bottom: - Julius Caesar (not minted), Augustus, Tiberius (not yet acquired) - Caligula, Claudius, Nero - Galba, Otho (not minted), Vitellius - Vespasian, Titus, Domitian
Hot stuff, love that you have them in a virtual tray too. How come you dont use a provincial portrait of Otho?
A couple years ago my dealer had a provincial bronze of Otho that I evaluated. The obverse portrait was generic -- obviously not modeled on any real-life image of Otho -- and I thought it was just too jarringly different from the others in my collection. It just didn't fit in.
Beautiful collection. I particularly like the Caligula, Vitellius and new Titus. Out of curiosity, which are your own favourites of this set?
Tough question! From a portrait standpoint, the Galba is just amazing, even more so in hand. I love the Caligula for both the portrait and the Ad Locutio reverse -- one of my favorites. The Claudius reverse has amazing detail, and I like the Nero Port of Ostia reverse although its clarity is not quite up to the recently posted one by Ancient Joe.
A well-matched addition! My favorite is definitely your Caligula - a wonderful and historic type - although I quite like your Galba portrait as well but mostly appreciate the overall diversity in reverse types across your collection.
