A famous
reverse type, apparently commemorating Trajan's
construction of five thousand additional seats in the
circus by moving and heightening the building's
western wall, the very wall which is shown as the
front wall in the coin type. Apparently unpublished
with the omitted letter in reverse legend, PINCIPI
instead of PRINCIPI; such errors are very unusual on
coins struck at the mint of Rome under the earlier
emperors. The rendering of the details of the reverse
type is somewhat more sketchy than normal, for example
there is no head of Sol atop the small temple to the
left of the obelisk and that same temple does not
interrupt the line indicating the top of the back wall
of the circus, which can instead be seen continuing
between the columns of the temple. Nevertheless this
must be an official reverse die, just somewhat
unskillfully executed, since the same obverse die of
our coin was also used with at least two other reverse
dies of ordinary official style, one showing the
Circus Maximus type (Paris 220, pl. 12), and the other
showing Victory inscribing VIC DAC onto a shield set
atop a palm tree (NFA XVI, 1985, lot 420).
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