The triumphal car on the reverse of this denarius is a small monument to a large fiction. By 18 BC Augustus had not led a triumph in over a decade, having declined further celebrations after his triple triumph of 29 BC, and yet here is the *quadriga triumphalis* in miniature, complete with Victory at the prow, an *aquila* mounted within, and a tiny galloping four-horse team riding on its flank, a chariot inside a chariot. The struck letters S P Q R, doubled in field and exergue, make the gift's nominal author explicit: the Senate and People of Rome offer this honor to CAESARI AVGVSTO, dative case, the recipient rather than the issuer. That grammatical detail matters.
Spanish mints in these years (Colonia Patricia is the usual guess, though "uncertain" is the honest cataloguer's verdict) produced a coordinated cycle of types advertising senatorial honors voted to the *princeps*: shields, wreaths, triumphal arches, ornamented chariots. Augustus had returned from the East in 19 BC having recovered the standards lost by Crassus at Carrhae, and the Senate responded with an avalanche of monuments he largely refused to celebrate in person, preferring to let the coinage and the marble do the boasting for him. The laureate head looks the part of a triumphator; the man himself stayed in his toga. That was the trick of the whole regime, condensed onto sixteen millimetres of silver.
- Mint
- Uncertain Spanish mint
- Struck
- circa 18 BC
- Authority
- Augustus
- Reverse
- Triumphal quadriga right with Victory at front, ornamented on side, containing an aquila and miniature galloping quadriga right