Mars stands quietly on the reverse of this denarius, holding a vexillum and a parazonium, and that quietness is the point. Struck at an uncertain Spanish mint around 18 to 17/16 BC, this anonymous silver piece (RIC I 150b) belongs to the years when Augustus was settling the western provinces into something resembling peace after the long grind of the Cantabrian Wars. The bare head on the obverse, untitled and unlegended, is the face of a princeps who no longer needs to shout his name on his coinage; everyone in the empire by now knew whose profile that was.
Mars here is not the berserk war-god of Republican triumphs but Mars the standard-bearer, the disciplined custodian of legionary honor, perfectly suited to a regime that was about to recover the Crassus standards from Parthia in 20 BC and would soon advertise that diplomatic coup across half its mintage. On a coin from Spain, where the legions had finally hammered the northern tribes into submission, a calm Mars with a vexillum is less a boast than a receipt: the wars are over, the standards are kept, the soldier-god has been put back in his proper place.
- Mint
- Uncertain Spanish mint
- Struck
- circa 18-17/16 BC
- Authority
- Augustus