In 20 BC, after a generation of Roman humiliation, the Parthians handed back the legionary standards lost by Crassus at Carrhae and by Antony in his Armenian fiasco. No battle was fought. Augustus, with the patient menace of a man who had time on his side, simply applied diplomatic pressure until the eagles came home, and then he sold the recovery as a triumph greater than any victory in the field. This denarius, struck around 18 BC at an uncertain Spanish mint (Colonia Patricia is the usual guess), is the advertisement. The laureate head on the obverse needs no legend, the face is the legend, and on the reverse stands a domed tetrastyle temple sheltering a chariot, an aquila, and a miniature quadriga, with SPQR running beneath in the exergue and again across the field.
This is the shrine of Mars Ultor, Mars the Avenger, vowed by the young Caesar at Philippi when he hunted his adoptive father's killers and now repurposed to house the returned standards. The Senate and People are credited in the legend, but the program is entirely Augustus: a temple as reliquary, a recovered eagle as relic, and a war won without fighting. The building shown here is almost certainly the small round temple on the Capitoline that received the standards in 20 BC, not the great Forum of Augustus temple still under construction and not dedicated until 2 BC. Roman coinage rarely lies outright, but it knows how to choose its angles.
- Mint
- Uncertain Spanish mint
- Struck
- Struck circa 18 BC
- Authority
- Augustus
- Reverse
- Temple of Mars Ultor, a round-domed tetrastyle temple set on a podium of three steps, containing a chariot with an aquila and miniature galloping quadriga facing right