Obverse: Head of Liber facing right, wreathed in ivy. Reverse: Augustus driving a biga pulled by two elephants, moving left.

Liber, the Italian god of wine and freedom often syncretized with Bacchus, was associated by Augustan propaganda with the new era of peace and abundance the regime claimed to inaugurate.

The elephant biga was an image of apotheosis and triumph, drawn from the iconography reserved for deified figures, and here links the living princeps to the divine honors granted his adoptive father Julius Caesar.

Denarius of AugustusRIC 282

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