Denarius of AugustusRIC 520

Pergamum mint · struck ca. 19-18 B.C.

Highest sale$6,463Median$6,463Recorded1 sale

Imagery

01Obverse

bare head of Augustus facing right.

02Reverse

Armenian captive standing facing, holding spear with hand resting on bow, commemorating the reintegration of Armenia into the Roman sphere of influence.

Price guide

est. value by grade · 1 sale

VF1

Very Fine

$6,463

$6,463–$6,463

Recent sales

1 recorded · most recent first


—	$6,463	VF	Stack's Bowers	— 0%

Price distribution

1 sale

Median by gradeIndividual saleY-axis: USD, log

Inscriptions

Obverse

AVGVSTVS

* AVGVSTVS, "the revered one," the cognomen voted to Octavian by the Senate in 27 B.C. to set him apart from ordinary magistrates. Reverse legend: CAESAR DIVI F ARMEN CAPTA IMP VIIII, expanding to Caesar Divi Filius, Armenia Capta, Imperator VIIII, "Caesar, son of the Deified, Armenia captured, hailed Imperator for the ninth time." Divi F(ilius)* refers to his adoptive father Julius Caesar, deified in 42 B.C., and the imperatorial acclamations were tallied for victories won under his auspices.

Reverse

CAESAR - DIVI F / ARMEN - CAPTA / IMP - VIIII

* CAESAR DIVI F ARMEN CAPTA IMP VIIII, expanding to Caesar Divi Filius, Armenia Capta, Imperator VIIII, "Caesar, son of the Deified, Armenia captured, hailed Imperator for the ninth time." Divi F(ilius)* refers to his adoptive father Julius Caesar, deified in 42 B.C., and the imperatorial acclamations were tallied for victories won under his auspices.

Historical context

Pergamum · ca. 19-18 B.C.

C. stands an Armenian captive in his peaked cap, spear in hand, bow resting beneath his fingers, pinned beneath the words ARMEN CAPTA as if Augustus had stormed the Caucasus. He had done nothing of the sort. C.

Tiberius, then a young stepson with a career to make, walked into Armenia at the head of an army and crowned Tigranes III without a battle; in the same season the Parthians, unnerved or merely pragmatic, returned the legionary standards lost by Crassus at Carrhae a generation earlier. The reverse legend stacks the claims with care, CAESAR DIVI F invoking the deified Julius, IMP VIIII counting an imperatorial salutation that diplomacy had earned as cheaply as war, and CAPTA borrowing the brutal vocabulary of conquest coinage (compare AEGYPTO CAPTA a decade before) for what was in truth a client-king installation. This is the Augustan trick in miniature: a settlement dressed as a victory, struck in silver, exported through the eastern provinces, and impossible to argue with once it was in your purse.

Mint: Pergamum
Struck: ca. 19-18 B.C.
Authority: Augustus
Reverse: Armenian captive standing facing, holding spear with hand resting on bow, commemorating the reintegration of Armenia into the Roman sphere of influence