In 5 BC Augustus took the consulship for the twelfth time, an unusual gesture from a princeps who had spent two decades pretending not to be a monarch, and the reason was dynastic: he was introducing his grandson Gaius Caesar to public life as princeps iuventutis. The tetradrachm struck that year at Antioch (McAlee 181) carries the laureate head of the emperor on the obverse and on the reverse the Tyche of Antioch perched on her rock with the river god Orontes swimming beneath her, an image lifted wholesale from the Seleucid bronze of Eutychides three centuries earlier.
The Greek legend dates the coin twice over, by Antioch's Actian Era (year 27, ETOUS Z KA) and by Augustus's twelfth consulship, anchoring Syrian provincial time to Roman political time and to the victory at Actium that had made both possible. The Tyche was the city's own, predating Rome by centuries; what was new was whose head sat opposite her, and the easy confidence with which Antioch's civic goddess now kept Roman consular company.
- Mint
- Antioch
- Struck
- 27 BC-AD 14, dated year 27 of the Actian Era and Cos. XII (5/4 BC)
- Authority
- Augustus
- Reverse
- Tyche seated right on rocky outcropping holding palm frond; below, half-length figure of river-god Orontes swimming right; monogram and consular date in right field