LICINIA EUDOXIA GOLD SOLIDUS – VERY RARE ISSUE OF CONSTANTINOPLE – AU NGC GRADED ROMAN IMPERIAL COIN (Inv. 20326)

$12,000.00

20326. WESTERN ROMAN EMPIRE. LICINIA EUDOXIA, AD 439-ca. 490.
Gold Solidus, 4.20 g, 22 mm. Issue of Constantinople, ca. AD 441-450.
Obv. AEL EVDOXIA AVG, diademed and draped bust of Eudoxia right, the hand of God (Manus Dei) above, crowning her. Rev. IMP XXXXII COS XVII P P, Constantinopolis enthroned left, holding globus cruciger and scepter, her foot on prow of galley, shield at right, star in left field, COMOB in exergue
RIC X 298.
NGC AU, Strike 4/5, Surface 4/5, “die shift,” “clipped,” extremely rare.

In AD 437, at the age of fifteen, Licinia Eudoxia became the wife of her cousin, Valentinian III, the western Roman emperor. Unfortunately, on 16 March 455, her husband was assassinated in the Campus Martius on the order of Petronius Maximus, a wealthy senator who was ambitious for imperial power. To lend a thin sheen of legitimacy to his usurpation, Petronius Maximus forced Eudoxia to marry him only two days after the death of Valentinian III. Unwilling to accept this lot, Eudoxia is said to have invited Gaiseric, the Vandal king of Carthage, to overthrow her second husband. In May, when news spread that Gaeseric was on his way with a powerful fleet and army, the mob turned against Petronius Maximus and stoned him to death. When Gaeseric and his forces reached Rome in June, there was no longer anyone to depose. The Vandal king captured the city and spent two weeks systematically plundering it during the infamous Sack of Rome before sailing back to Carthage with Eudoxia and her daughters, Placidia and Eudocia, as his honored prisoners. After seven years, the eastern emperor, Leo I, paid a large ransom for the return of Eudoxia and Placidia to Constantinople. Eudocia, however, remained in Carthage, where she had become the wife of Gaiseric’s son, Hunneric.