C. and hung in the Curia Julia, and the four letters crammed onto its face, SPQR / CL V, are the Roman state's official shorthand for the moment it surrendered to him. The original shield, Augustus tells us in the *Res Gestae*, was inscribed for his *virtus*, *clementia*, *iustitia*, and *pietas*, the cardinal virtues that justified handing the Republic to a single man. Encircling it on the coin is the *corona civica*, the oak wreath awarded for saving the lives of citizens, another senatorial honor of 27 and another reminder that Augustus was the one who had stopped the killing (having, of course, done a great deal of it first).
, probably while the *princeps* was settling the northwest after the Cantabrian wars, the type advertises to soldiers and provincials alike the constitutional fiction on which the new order rested: that the Senate and People still gave, and Augustus merely received. The bare head on the obverse, no diadem, no laurel of permanent triumph, completes the argument. He is only a citizen. The shield on the reverse says otherwise.
- Mint
- Uncertain Spanish Mint
- Struck
- ca. 19-18 B.C.
- Authority
- Augustus
- Reverse
- Shield inscribed SPQR / CL V within oak wreath