Lugdunum in 15 BC was barely a mint at all, a fresh imperial foundation in Gaul taking over silver production from a Senate that Augustus had quietly stopped trusting with the job. This denarius is one of its early products: the princeps bare-headed on the obverse (no wreath, no laurel, the studied modesty of a man who had every honor and pretended to want none), and on the reverse Diana standing with spear and bow, her hound alert at her feet. Diana is not random. She was the huntress of the Alpine and Gallic frontiers, patroness of wild country, and 15 BC is the year Drusus and Tiberius drove through the Alps and brought Raetia and Vindelicia into the empire, a campaign Horace would soon set to verse in the fourth book of Odes.
The goddess on this coin is the goddess of the country being conquered, now standing in Roman silver minted on conquered ground, paid out to the legions who did the conquering. Augustus rarely needed to shout. The arrangement spoke for him.
- Mint
- Lugdunum
- Struck
- 15 BC
- Authority
- Augustus