Stamped on this small disc of silver is the building Augustus had promised the gods almost three decades before he actually got around to finishing it. The reverse shows the Temple of Mars Ultor, Mars the Avenger, its six columns and curious round dome sheltering an *aquila* flanked by two *signa*: not generic military furniture but the legionary standards Crassus had lost to the Parthians at Carrhae in 53 BC, recovered by negotiation in 20 BC and paraded as though Augustus had personally ridden them home.
The temple on the coin is almost certainly not the great precinct in the Forum of Augustus (still a building site in 18 BC) but a smaller shrine on the Capitoline, run up to house the standards while the grander project crawled toward its dedication in 2 BC. Struck at an uncertain Spanish mint, probably while the *princeps* was still settling Roman affairs in the western provinces, the denarius does the political work that Augustus excelled at: a diplomatic settlement repackaged as divine vengeance, a humiliation erased without a battle, the Republic's worst military embarrassment converted into temple architecture and pressed into the hand of every soldier who took his pay.
- Mint
- Uncertain Spanish mint
- Struck
- circa 18 BC
- Authority
- Augustus
- Reverse
- Temple of Mars Ultor with round dome and six columns set on a three-step podium, containing an aquila between two signa