The little temple on the reverse of this denarius is the point of the whole exercise, and it is doing a great deal of political work for so small an image. C. at one of the Spanish mints that Augustus relied on heavily in the years after Actium, the coin shows a domed tetrastyle shrine raised on three steps, sheltering inside it a triumphal chariot bearing a legionary eagle and a miniature quadriga. C. C.
and recovered, not by force but by a diplomatic settlement, in that same year. The laureate profile on the obverse, unlabeled but unmistakable, belongs to the man who had turned a generation of Roman defeat into a bloodless triumph and then minted the news across the western provinces in silver. Calling the Parthian return a victory required a certain creativity. Augustus committed to it completely, parading the eagles, building the temple to receive them, and stamping the image into the coinage until the fiction had the solidity of marble.
- Mint
- Uncertain Spanish Mint
- Struck
- ca. 18 B.C.
- Authority
- Augustus
- Reverse
- shows a domed tetrastyle temple set on three steps with a triumphal chariot carrying an aquila and miniature quadriga inside