The capricorn on the reverse of this Lugdunum denarius is not a whim of the engraver but a piece of carefully curated propaganda: Augustus had decided, by the time this coin left the mint in 12 BC, that the sea-goat was his cosmic signature. Suetonius tells us the princeps put such faith in his nativity that he published his horoscope and struck silver bearing the sign under which the Moon had stood at his birth (the actual sun-sign of his September delivery being the unglamorous Libra). Here that creature clutches a globe between its forehooves, and the message is not subtle: the man whose bare, unadorned head fills the obverse, no diadem, no wreath, just a Roman face, holds the world because the stars themselves arranged it.
The legend IMP XI on the reverse counts his eleventh imperatorial acclamation, anchoring the celestial claim to the unromantic ledger of military victories. 12 BC was the year Agrippa died, the year Augustus took on the office of pontifex maximus after Lepidus finally expired in his gilded exile, the year the regime began visibly to think about succession. A coin that says the heavens chose this man, struck at the great imperial mint at Lugdunum that Augustus had recently made the silver-producing heart of the West, was exactly the argument the moment required.
- Mint
- Lugdunum
- Struck
- 12 BC
- Authority
- Augustus