A triumphal chariot in miniature, riding atop another triumphal chariot: this denarius, struck around 18 BC at an uncertain Spanish mint (RIC I 110), is a quiet act of self-mythologizing in silver. The reverse shows a slow quadriga, its side panels decorated with the legionary aquila and crowned by a tiny model quadriga of its own, with the letters S P Q R floating above. What the viewer is meant to recognize is the ornamental chariot voted to Augustus by the Senate and People, a perpetual honorific echo of the triple triumph of 29 BC for Dalmatia, Actium, and Alexandria.
By the late teens BC, Augustus had stopped celebrating actual triumphs (those would now go to legates and family members), so the ceremonial quadriga had to do the work that real laurels had once done, parading his victories in absentia through every market in the empire that handled a denarius. The laureate head on the obverse is unlabeled, no legend, no title: by 18 BC the face needed no caption, and that confidence is itself the message. SPQR still ostensibly granted the honors; the coin records, in the smallest possible compass, who was actually doing the giving and who the receiving.
- Mint
- Uncertain Spanish mint
- Struck
- Struck circa 18 BC
- Authority
- Augustus
- Reverse
- Slow quadriga right with ornamented panels containing aquila and surmounted by miniature quadriga right, with S P Q R above